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NASA Suspends March Insight Mission
The Red Planet and Earth align favorably only once in every 26 months, due to which now, NASA’s InSight Mars lander has to wait until mid-2018 to start its mission to characterize interior of Mars in unmatched detail, in case the spacecraft gets off the ground at all. However, while recently conducting a test in acute cold temperature of -45 degrees Celsius, the device again experienced failure.
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Over the next couple of months, NASA will assess options for repairing the faulty instrument, a sensitive seismometer that was provided by the French space agency, CNES.
John Grunsfeld, NASA’s science mission chief said that the launch date was very close, and it was not possible to fix the leak in time for the launch.
Insight was expected to arrive at Mars in September to take measurements of the red planet’s interior and its atmosphere, and to take color images. “We just haven’t had time to work through that because our focus was on getting ready to launch”.
A leak occurred earlier this year that had prevented the seismometer from retaining vacuum conditions. With the suspension of the mission, the spacecraft will be returned to Lockheed’s facility in Denver.
Director of the Planetary Science Division in Washington Jim Green noted in the press release in 2008 NASA made the decision to push back the launch of the Mars Science Laboratory Mission for more prep time. The mission would have been helpful in finding how the rocky planet formed and evolved.
“Gaining information about the core, mantle and crust of Mars is a high priority for planetary science, and InSight was built to accomplish this”.
NASA has put its next Mars mission on hold indefinitely because of a leaky instrument.
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However, the space agency stated that the cancellation of InSight mission would not affect other Mars missions. The ideal 2016 launch window is between March 4 and 30th.