Author Topic: InSight Mission Updates (Post Landing)  (Read 131655 times)

Offline Blackstar

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Re: InSight Mission Updates (Post Landing)
« Reply #320 on: 12/31/2022 11:54 pm »
Sorry to flog the dead horse

Flog away.

Don't assume that this question was not asked 20+ years ago.

Offline ccdengr

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Re: InSight Mission Updates (Post Landing)
« Reply #321 on: 01/01/2023 12:04 am »
InSight lasted significantly beyond its design life.
This.  No spacecraft is designed to last indefinitely.  They are designed to last for a specified time with healthy margins.  If one can do that without some capability that costs something in dollars or complexity or risk, then it's an impossible sell to add that.  Solar panel self-cleaning, even if it was as easy as laypeople always seem to think, just doesn't make that cut.
« Last Edit: 01/01/2023 12:05 am by ccdengr »

Offline Blackstar

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Re: InSight Mission Updates (Post Landing)
« Reply #322 on: 01/01/2023 01:44 pm »
This.  No spacecraft is designed to last indefinitely.  They are designed to last for a specified time with healthy margins.  If one can do that without some capability that costs something in dollars or complexity or risk, then it's an impossible sell to add that.  Solar panel self-cleaning, even if it was as easy as laypeople always seem to think, just doesn't make that cut.


Yup, and not only is it an impossible sell, the designers don't want to even try making that sell. They're trying to keep the cost down below the cost cap for the program. That means they are designing to reach the mission lifetime (with safety margin) and no more. No mission proposer wants to get rejected because they added that one little thing to the mission that pushed them over the cost cap and resulted in some other proposer winning. They do all hope for much longer lifetimes, however.

Now there's a lot more that can be written about this subject, because many--not all--missions significantly exceed their design lifetimes. Years ago, I dealt with a NASA HQ guy who was convinced that this was because the designers were padding their missions and they could cut back, and reduce costs, so that they achieved the design lifetime and didn't exceed it by huge amounts. He was a former engineer for a three-letter agency, and he certainly knew more about this than I did, so I had to consult with a bunch of mission designers and ask them about that. Almost all of them disagreed with his premise. I don't remember why, but at least part of it is that for some spacecraft components, there's no way to select a specific mission lifetime once you get past a certain point.

I'm going to make up some numbers here, but it's something like this: you can design it to last 2 years with 95% confidence. And then you probably have 90% confidence that it will make it to 3 years, and 80% confidence that it will reach 4 years, and 70% confidence that it will reach 6 years. But for many things, there is no way to design it to 95% confidence for 2 years and then have it drop off radically so that it's only 50% at 3 years. If it works to the design life, it's probably going to keep working for a long time beyond that.

InSight lasted four years. It was designed for two. That's a pretty successful mission.

« Last Edit: 01/01/2023 02:40 pm by Blackstar »

Offline Don2

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Re: InSight Mission Updates (Post Landing)
« Reply #323 on: 02/14/2023 06:46 am »
From 2023 LPSC abstracts about Insight:

1/ Collected 1319 Mars quakes and 8 meteoroid impacts. Largest quake magnitude was 4.7. 14 events have a complete location.

2/Seismicity is located in only a few spots around Mars, none close to Insight. Cerberus Fossae is the most active area, and there is evidence for active volcanic dykes there.

3/ There is seismic evidence for a liquid silicate layer at the bottom of the mantle. This would give a core smaller than the currently accepted radius of 1830km. The current radius gives a low core density which requires a large light element budget which is in excess of what is cosmochemically considered feasible. The new seismic analysis supports a smaller, denser liquid core made of Fe-Ni-S-C-O-H. This is consistent with the radio science data.
https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2023/pdf/1448.pdf

Offline Blackstar

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Re: InSight Mission Updates (Post Landing)
« Reply #324 on: 02/27/2023 06:08 pm »
Listening to MEPAG meeting.

InSight is dead, but they are still listening for signals on a non-interference basis with other listening efforts, just in case a dust devil cleans it off and it powers up.

They were hoping for dust devils and expected them, but they did not occur.

The laser reflector is covered with dust but apparently still works. That could change if it gets more dust.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: InSight Mission Updates (Post Landing)
« Reply #325 on: 03/20/2023 06:22 pm »
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11214-023-00964-0


    Special Communication
    Open Access
    Published: 20 March 2023

Results from InSight Robotic Arm Activities

    M. Golombek, T. Hudson, P. Bailey, N. Balabanska, E. Marteau, C. Charalambous, M. Baker, M. Lemmon, B. White, R. D. Lorenz, T. Spohn, J. Maki, P. Kallemeyn, J. B. Garvin, C. Newman, K. Hurst, N. Murdoch, N. Williams, W. B. Banerdt, P. Lognonné, P. Delage, R. Lapeyre, E. Gaudin, C. Yana, …T. Gabsi

Space Science Reviews volume 219, Article number: 20 (2023) Cite this article

Abstract

The InSight lander carried an Instrument Deployment System (IDS) that included an Instrument Deployment Arm (IDA), scoop, five finger “claw” grapple, forearm-mounted Instrument Deployment Camera (IDC) requiring arm motion to image a target, and lander-mounted Instrument Context Camera (ICC), designed to image the workspace, and to place the instruments onto the surface. As originally proposed, the IDS included a previously built arm and flight spare black and white cameras and had no science objectives or requirements, or expectation to be used after instrument deployment (90 sols). During project development the detectors were upgraded to color, and it was recognized that the arm could be used to carry out a wide variety of activities that would enable both geology and physical properties investigations. During surface operations for two martian years, the IDA was used during major campaigns to image the surface around the lander, to deploy the instruments, to assist the mole in penetrating beneath the surface, to bury a portion of the seismometer tether, to clean dust from the solar arrays to increase power, and to conduct a surface geology investigation including soil mechanics and physical properties experiments. No other surface mission has engaged in such a sustained and varied campaign of arm and scoop activities directed at such a diverse suite of objectives. Images close to the surface and continuous meteorology measurements provided important constraints on the threshold friction wind speed needed to initiate aeolian saltation and surface creep. The IDA was used extensively for almost 22 months to assist the mole in penetrating into the subsurface. Soil was scraped into piles and dumped onto the seismometer tether six times in an attempt to bury the tether and ∼30%
was entrained in the wind and dispersed downwind 1-2 m, darkening the surface. Seven solar array cleaning experiments were conducted by dumping scoops of soil from 35 cm above the lander deck during periods of high wind that dispersed the sand onto the panels that kicked dust off of the panels into suspension in the atmosphere, thereby increasing the power by ∼15% during this period. Final IDA activities included an indentation experiment that used the IDA scoop to push on the ground to measure the plastic deformation of the soil that complemented soil mechanics measurements from scoop interactions with the surface, and two experiments in which SEIS measured the tilt from the arm pressing on the ground to derive near surface elastic properties.

Offline Comga

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Re: InSight Mission Updates (Post Landing)
« Reply #326 on: 03/20/2023 08:27 pm »
This.  No spacecraft is designed to last indefinitely.  They are designed to last for a specified time with healthy margins.  If one can do that without some capability that costs something in dollars or complexity or risk, then it's an impossible sell to add that.  Solar panel self-cleaning, even if it was as easy as laypeople always seem to think, just doesn't make that cut.

Yup, and not only is it an impossible sell, the designers don't want to even try making that sell. They're trying to keep the cost down below the cost cap for the program. That means they are designing to reach the mission lifetime (with safety margin) and no more. No mission proposer wants to get rejected because they added that one little thing to the mission that pushed them over the cost cap and resulted in some other proposer winning. They do all hope for much longer lifetimes, however.
(snip)

(my bolding)
That’s generally true for plebeian mission managers but this is JPL. ;)

From the abstract for the Golumbek paper on Insight’s IDA/arm:
Quote
During project development the detectors were upgraded to color, and it was recognized that the arm could be used to carry out a wide variety of activities that would enable both geology and physical properties investigations.

It seems highly unlikely that a color camera, which usually has half the resolution of the equivalent monochromatic camera, was really important to the science mission.  And changing the sensor or building a new camera costs significant money.

Programs at JPL are pretty “forward leaning” when considering adding functions and hardware elements, and trying to hold JPL to cost caps is tough. (I know one person who lost his position attempting that, and someone at JPL who built a twenty man team to do much less well what he had done on a previous mission with two. Long stories)

This isn’t to say that we haven’t seen on occasion terrific results from JPL “mission creep”.  It’s part of our Faustian bargain.

Suffice it to say, it wouldn’t have been that surprising if after considering the “wide variety of activities“ they could do, the Insight team had added a brush to the arm.



« Last Edit: 03/20/2023 11:34 pm by Comga »
What kind of wastrels would dump a perfectly good booster in the ocean after just one use?

Offline russianhalo117

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« Last Edit: 05/18/2023 09:08 pm by zubenelgenubi »

Offline Phil Stooke

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Re: InSight Mission Updates (Post Landing)
« Reply #328 on: 05/18/2023 11:02 pm »
"added a brush to the arm"

Brushing abrasive dust into the surface of a solar panel is not a wise move.  Also the range of motion of the arm would almost certainly not even enable it to reach out over the panels.  It was designed to work in a specific workspace.

Online catdlr

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Offline Hobbes-22

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Re: InSight Mission Updates (Post Landing)
« Reply #331 on: 05/29/2023 08:01 am »
I don't remember why, but at least part of it is that for some spacecraft components, there's no way to select a specific mission lifetime once you get past a certain point.

I'm going to make up some numbers here, but it's something like this: you can design it to last 2 years with 95% confidence. And then you probably have 90% confidence that it will make it to 3 years, and 80% confidence that it will reach 4 years, and 70% confidence that it will reach 6 years. But for many things, there is no way to design it to 95% confidence for 2 years and then have it drop off radically so that it's only 50% at 3 years. If it works to the design life, it's probably going to keep working for a long time beyond that.

InSight lasted four years. It was designed for two. That's a pretty successful mission.

Yep. This is a well-known observation in engineering: reliability tends to follow a bathtub curve. Components will either fail quickly after the device has been built, or they'll last for a long time before failing.

Online FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: InSight Mission Updates (Post Landing)
« Reply #332 on: 08/19/2023 08:24 pm »
https://twitter.com/haygenwarren/status/1692967513577947216

Quote
Although its mission ended in December, data from NASA’s InSight lander is allowing scientists to continue making new discoveries about Mars.

In fact, one team of scientists recently discovered that Mars’ rotational speed is accelerating ⬇️

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2023/08/insight-rise/

Offline Star One

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Re: InSight Mission Updates (Post Landing)
« Reply #333 on: 10/19/2023 04:21 pm »
Quote
The strongest-ever quake to violently shake Mars arose not because of a crashing asteroidbut rather the tectonic forces within the planet itself, scientists reported on Tuesday (Oct. 17). The new findings show the Red Planet is more seismically active than previously thought.

On May 4, 2022, NASA's now-retired InSight lander recorded a magnitude 4.7 quake, five times stronger than the previous record holder of magnitude 4.2 that InSight measured in 2021. Unlike most marsquakes that cease within an hour, the reverberations from the May 2022 quake continued for a record six hours, marking the strongest and longest quake ever recorded on another planet.

https://www.livescience.com/space/mars/strongest-and-longest-marsquake-ever-detected-finally-has-an-explanation

Related paper:

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023GL103619

Online FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: InSight Mission Updates (Post Landing)
« Reply #334 on: 10/23/2023 03:29 am »
https://twitter.com/haygenwarren/status/1716194597922070578

Quote
A team of scientists has found the source of the largest Marsquake observed by NASA’s InSight lander. The team concluded the quake must have been caused by a release of stress within the planet’s crust.

Martijn Luinstra’s debut article for NSF ⬇️

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2023/10/s1222a-origins/

Offline Star One

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Re: InSight Mission Updates (Post Landing)
« Reply #335 on: 10/25/2023 07:00 pm »
Quote
The core of Mars can look bigger than it actually is because of a previously unknown layer of molten rock surrounding it, scientists suggest with a pair of new studies.



Quote
Since the 2021 studies appeared, InSight detected more Martian seismic waves, produced by a meteorite impact on Mars far away from the lander. "The impact produced a lot of energy, generating seismic waves that traversed the core of Mars," Khan said. "Up until then, we didn't have any of those to examine. They allowed us to gain a completely new picture of the interior of Mars, especially deep structures that we couldn't illuminate before."

Two new studies now estimate the center of Mars is about 2,050 to 2,080 miles (3,300 to 3,350 km) in diameter. All in all, the Martian core "is 30 percent smaller in volume than previous estimates," Henri Samuel, a planetary dynamicist at Paris Cité University in France, told Space.com.

https://www.space.com/mars-core-molten-silicon-rock

Related papers:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06586-4

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06601-8

Offline Kaputnik

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Re: InSight Mission Updates (Post Landing)
« Reply #336 on: 03/05/2024 11:54 pm »
The laser reflector is covered with dust but apparently still works. That could change if it gets more dust.

Can the amount of dust covering the reflector be reasonably estimated from the return signal? Or is it more of a case of you either see it, or you don't?
"I don't care what anything was DESIGNED to do, I care about what it CAN do"- Gene Kranz

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