[ad_1]
PASADENA, California – It all comes down to that.
After a nearly seven-month journey in deep space, covering more than 300 million miles (483 million kilometers), NASA's InSight landing module must land on Mars today (Nov. 26) before 3:00 p.m. EST (2000 GMT). You can watch the action live here at Space.com courtesy of NASA, starting at 2pm. EST (1900 GMT).
More than half of all missions to Mars have not come safely to the Red Planet over the years, so the InSight team is worried about today's events. [NASA’s InSight Mars Lander: Full Coverage]
"I'm completely excited and completely nervous all at the same time," InSight project manager Tom Hoffman said at a press conference here at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) yesterday.
"Everything we've done to this day makes us feel comfortable and confident that we'll land on Mars," added Hoffman, who works at JPL. "But everything has to go perfectly, and Mars can always throw us a curved ball."
Artist illustration showing a simulated view of NASA's InSight lander descending towards the surface of Mars under a parachute. InSight will land on the afternoon of November 26, 2018.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
Hoffman also said he's having trouble sleeping in the last few days, but nerves are not the only reason; their young grandchildren are visiting Thanksgiving, and they have been noisy.
InSight will enter the Martian atmosphere today at about 19,800 km / h. The atmospheric drag will dissipate about 90% of the considerable kinetic energy of the probe, but this will not suffice; InSight slows down further with the aid of a supersonic parachute and then boosts.
If all goes according to plan, the landing module will gently fall on the red earth of an equatorial flat plain called Elysium Planitia at about 5 mph (8 km / h) – a little faster than walking speed. And the touchdown will occur only 6.5 minutes after InSight senses its first taste of the Mars air.
But the tension will not subside soon after landing. The InSight team will not know that the solar panels of the stationary spacecraft were deployed until 8:35 p.m. EST (0135 GMT), at least when the NASA orbiter Mars Odyssey will be in a position to transmit to Earth the confirmation of this historic event.
The $ 850 million USS InSight Mars mission – which is short for "Inner Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport" – was launched May 5 on the V V rocket at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California . This was the first time: all previous NASA interplanetary missions were launched on the Space Coast of Florida.
The probe is equipped with two main scientific instruments – a probe of excavator heat and a trio of incredibly sensitive seismographs. This equipment will help mission scientists map the Martian interior in unprecedented detail over the next two years, revealing key insights into the formation and evolution of rocky planets, NASA officials said.
The mission team will also use InSight's communications equipment to measure the oscillation of the axial tilt of Mars. Such information will clarify the size and nature of the planet's nucleus.
A diagram of NASA's InSight Mars landing module and its scientific instruments to look inside the Red Planet.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech – Adrian Mann / Tobias Roetsch / Future Plc
This focus on the Martian interior explains why the mission team chose such a boring landing site: cliffs, craters, ancient river deltas, and other landscape features would only complicate a safe touchdown.
And do not expect a flurry of data soon after landing today: InSight's scientific work will not begin to count for several months. It will take a long time for the team to prepare to deploy the seismograph set and the heat probe, which InSight must place on the Martian surface with its robotic arm and then calibrate the instruments.
"When we get to the surface, InSight is a slow-motion mission," said Bruce Banerdt, also of JPL, InSight's principal investigator, at yesterday's press conference.
The probe was launched with two spacecraft, MarCO-A and MarCO-B, to prove that cubes can explore interplanetary space. The two free-flight probes have succeeded in this task, but have one more job ahead of them: they will try to transmit InSight data during Lander's entry, descent and landing today. A flaw in this relay front will not be disastrous, however; other NASA vessels, such as the Odyssey and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, will also do this work.
Initially, InSight should have been launched in March 2016, but team members detected a leak in the vacuum chamber around the seismometers by the end of 2015. The leak was corrected but not in time to find the down window. (Earth and Mars align favorably to planetary missions only once every 26 months, so InSight had to wait a bit before finally getting off the ground.)
Visit Space.com today for complete coverage of the InSight landing on Mars.
Mike Wall's book on the search for alien life "Out there"(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; Karl Tate) is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow Us @Spacedotcom or Facebook. Originally posted in Space.com.
[ad_2]
Source link