The InSight Mission to Mars Master Thread

[Star One]

You can see some specifics on the "Status" slide that I posted. Lots of instruments late.

Banerdt has always been more open about his work than some others, so he should be applauded for admitting the issues. Let's hope that they can keep inside the box.

They sounded genuinely surprised about the arm not working as expected considering its legacy technology.

[Blackstar]

Banerdt also said that the arm turned out to be less "legacy" than they expected. This is a classic problem with spacecraft and it is why there really can be no such thing as "mass production" of science spacecraft. By the time you get around to building another one, either vendors have gone out of business or they no longer produce the parts that they did the last time. So InSight called up the vendor and said "We want some parts to an arm like you produced back in 1998" and the engineer on the other end of the phone says "I was in grade school in 1998. I don't think we produce any of that stuff anymore."

That was in fact one of the issues with Curiosity leading into Mars 2020--they wanted to get a go-ahead on the new rover soon enough so that they would not face parts obsolescence and supply issues. They probably still will for some things because Curiosity was being designed and built 10 years ago. But they will have fewer issues like that to face.

[Blackstar]

[jacqmans]

May 27, 2015
RELEASE 15-106
NASA Begins Testing Mars Lander in Preparation for Next Mission to Red Planet

Testing is underway on NASA’s next mission on the journey to Mars, a stationary lander scheduled to launch in March 2016.

The lander is called InSight, an abbreviation for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport. It is about the size of a car and will be the first mission devoted to understanding the interior structure of the Red Planet. Examining the planet's deep interior could reveal clues about how all rocky planets, including Earth, formed and evolved.

The current testing will help ensure InSight can operate in and survive deep space travel and the harsh conditions of the Martian surface. The spacecraft will lift off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and land on Mars about six months later.

The technical capabilities and knowledge gained from Insight, and other Mars missions, are crucial to NASA's journey to Mars, which includes sending astronauts to the Red Planet in the 2030s.

"Today, our robotic scientific explorers are paving the way, making great progress on the journey to Mars," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "Together, humans and robotics will pioneer Mars and the solar system."

During the environmental testing phase at Lockheed Martin's Space Systems facility near Denver, the lander will be exposed to extreme temperatures, vacuum conditions of nearly zero air pressure simulating interplanetary space, and a battery of other tests over the next seven months. The first will be a thermal vacuum test in the spacecraft's "cruise" configuration, which will be used during its seven-month journey to Mars. In the cruise configuration, the lander is stowed inside an aeroshell capsule and the spacecraft's cruise stage – for power, communications, course corrections and other functions on the way to Mars -- is fastened to the capsule.

"The assembly of InSight went very well and now it's time to see how it performs," said Stu Spath, InSight program manager at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver. "The environmental testing regimen is designed to wring out any issues with the spacecraft so we can resolve them while it's here on Earth. This phase takes nearly as long as assembly, but we want to make sure we deliver a vehicle to NASA that will perform as expected in extreme environments."

Other tests include vibrations simulating launch and checking for electronic interference between different parts of the spacecraft.  The testing phase concludes with a second thermal vacuum test in which the spacecraft is exposed to the temperatures and atmospheric pressures it will experience as it operates on the Martian surface.

The mission's science team includes U.S. and international co-investigators from universities, industry and government agencies.

"It's great to see the spacecraft put together in its launch configuration," said InSight Project Manager Tom Hoffman at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California. "Many teams from across the globe have worked long hours to get their elements of the system delivered for these tests. There still remains much work to do before we are ready for launch, but it is fantastic to get to this critical milestone."
 
The InSight mission is led by JPL's Bruce Banerdt. The Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, France’s space agency, and the German Aerospace Center are each contributing a science instrument to the two-year scientific mission. InSight's international science team includes researchers from Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

JPL manages InSight for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company built the lander.

For addition information about the mission, visit:

http://insight.jpl.nasa.gov

More information about NASA's journey to Mars is available online at:

https://www.nasa.gov/topics/journeytomars

[Chris Bergin]

Article for assembly complete:
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/05/insight-mars-lander-ahead-2016-launch/

[redliox]

Good to hear that InSight is nearly finished.  Have the French instruments been integrated too?

[JBF]

Has anyone seen something official on the landing sequence of events?

[NovaSilisko]

Has anyone seen something official on the landing sequence of events?

Well, I would say it's safe to assume it will be more-or-less identical to that of Phoenix.

[JBF]

Has anyone seen something official on the landing sequence of events?

Well, I would say it's safe to assume it will be more-or-less identical to that of Phoenix.

Good point.  Here is a link to the NASA animation of the Phoenix landing.

[jon.amos]

Some low res pictures of ALTO phase of the solar panels for this mission.

[redliox]

Although it's over a half-year away, preparations are being made even at Mars for InSight.  MRO is apparently going to cover its landing; on several sites they announced there's going to be a thruster firing to adjust the orbiter's path; apparently it means changing it from a sun-synched 3 pm afternoon observation to 2:30 pm.  I can only presume without the adjustment it would have meant MRO would have been just beyond the limb of Mars relative to the descending InSight.

I'm actually a little psyched for InSight, largely since it will do something different and as significant as the rock imagery from the rovers.

[TheFallen]

Send your name to Mars aboard the NASA InSight lander:

http://mars.nasa.gov/participate/send-your-name/insight/

The deadline is September 8 (midnight, ET)

[zubenelgenubi]

Any news when the ALTO work on Insight at the Lockheed-Martin Denver location will be completed?  Where do they now stand in the process?

Is there an estimated time for shipment to Vandenberg for launch?

[redliox]

InSight's now fully assembled and undergoing a batch of preflight testing.  There seems to be optimism it'll launch on schedule and just fine during March for a landing on Mars 6 months later in September.

[Jevans]

In a meeting this morning I was told there's some significant doubt growing that InSight is going to be ready for launch next year - problematic instrument integration being the cause.

[vjkane]

In a meeting this morning I was told there's some significant doubt growing that InSight is going to be ready for launch next year - problematic instrument integration being the cause.

That would be a very serious ouch.  The cost of keeping the team assembled for two years could well prevent NASA from selecting two Discovery missions from the current competition and fall back to one.

[redliox]

In a meeting this morning I was told there's some significant doubt growing that InSight is going to be ready for launch next year - problematic instrument integration being the cause.

Did you hear which of the instruments were causing trouble?  I can only assume either the heat-probe or the seisometer, since the antenna setup (for monitoring how Mars wobbles) would seem to be a simpler affair.  I do hope this gets wrapped up and on schedule; this is the first for deep geology on Mars.

[Blackstar]

It's the French one, whatever that one is. They had a problem with leaking seals, had to send it back to France.

[Graham]

It's the French one, whatever that one is. They had a problem with leaking seals, had to send it back to France.

It's SEIS, the seismometer.
This worrisome news. Any idea what reprecussions this could have in the next Discovery mission?

In a meeting this morning I was told there's some significant doubt growing that InSight is going to be ready for launch next year - problematic instrument integration being the cause.

That would be a very serious ouch.  The cost of keeping the team assembled for two years could well prevent NASA from selecting two Discovery missions from the current competition and fall back to one.

Even if InSight went off without a hitch I wouldn't expect the selection of two missions (AFAIK this hasn't happened in the history of the program). Or are you referring to the down select for more advanced study that typically occurs during the selection phase?

[vjkane]

Even if InSight went off without a hitch I wouldn't expect the selection of two missions (AFAIK this hasn't happened in the history of the program). Or are you referring to the down select for more advanced study that typically occurs during the selection phase?

In the early phase of the Discovery program, two missions were commonly selected.  NASA has said that it is considering selecting two from the finalists, and if so, they would push out the start of the next competition.