NASA's InSight Mars Lander Touches Down 1 Week from Today!

[sl8]

(Note - landing is now in 6 days)

From https://www.space.com/42473-insight-mars-landing-one-week-away.html

Week from Today!

By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | November 19, 2018 07:30am ET



The first Mars landing in more than six years is just a week away.

NASA's $850 million InSight lander will arrive at the Red Planet on the afternoon of Nov. 26, hopefully amid a flurry of celebratory whoops akin to those elicited by the successful touchdown of the Curiosity Mars rover on Aug. 5, 2012.

But success is far from guaranteed. [NASA's InSight Mars Lander: 10 Surprising Facts]

"Although we've done it before, landing on Mars is hard, and this mission is no different," Rob Manning, chief engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said in a recent video about InSight's upcoming landing.

"It takes thousands of steps to go from the top of the atmosphere to the surface, and each one of them has to work perfectly to be a successful mission," Manning added.

...

More at link.

[Judi Lynn]

1. Here's Why NASA's InSight Will Land on a 'Boring' Part of Mars

By Meghan Bartels, Space.com Senior Writer | November 23, 2018 09:30am ET

NASA is just days away from plopping its robotic geoscientist, the Mars InSight lander, onto the surface of the Red Planet — but if all goes smoothly, the explorer won't have much of a view to enjoy.

Scientists on the $850 million project very carefully targeted where they wanted the lander to touch down, settling on an ellipse-shaped section of a feature called Elysium Planitia, a large volcanic plain located a little north of the Curiosity rover's home.

The team considered two key criteria as they decided where to place the lander. The first is safety. Landing on Mars is always a challenge because of the planet's thin atmosphere, so the InSight team wanted a patch of fairly flat land to reduce the risk of the three-legged robot toppling over at touchdown.

. . .

That meant the location needed to be able to accommodate InSight's instruments, especially the probe that will hammer itself 16 feet (5 meters) below the surface in order to measure the planet's below-ground temperature.

More:
https://www.space.com/42509-insight-mars-landing-site-elysium-planitia.html?utm_source=notification

~ ~ ~

To sl8, regarding original article:

The article's image really heightens our anticipation of this new endeavor. Amazing!

[Judi Lynn]

2. Had to return, hours after reading the info. regarding InSight to say I can't lose the idea

of this new mechanical critter's new agenda.

It's so interesting, so complex, so difficult. So much to learn if things go well.

What an assignment for InSight.

[Judi Lynn]

3. NASA's InSight Mars Lander: Full Coverage

By Tariq Malik, Space.com Managing Editor | November 24, 2018 10:03am ET

On Nov. 26, NASA will make history on Mars. The space agency's newest Mars probe, the InSight Mars lander, will touch down on the flat plains of Elysium Planitia to study the Red Planet's core like never before. Armed with a crane, heat probe and seismometer, InSight will look deep to understand Marsquakes and other Martian secrets. See our full coverage of the mission below and visit Space.com to watch it liveMonday (Nov. 26)!

https://www.space.com/42488-insight-mars-lander-mission-full-coverage.html

[Judi Lynn]

4. Get Ready for InSight Mars Landing's '6 Minutes of Terror'

By Mindy Weisberger, Senior Writer | November 24, 2018 10:06am ET

When NASA's InSight mission arrives at Mars on Monday (Nov. 26), the probe faces a formidable challenge — perhaps the most harrowing so far of its seven-month journey — touching down on the planet's surface.

Any given moment of the process of launching a spacecraft and propelling it toward a distant target in our solar system carries risks. But InSight's descent will be an especially nerve-wracking nail-biter for NASA: Mission control won't have any idea what's happening to the spacecraft in real time, due to the minutes-long delay in the craft's transmission signal.

During the critical minutes after InSight breaches Mars' atmosphere, when the probe is hurtling toward the planet's surface, news of the lander's progress won't yet have reached Earth. For 6 long minutes, NASA engineers will tensely wait for InSight's status reports to catch up, leaving the team unable to confirm if InSight landed safely or if something unexpected went horribly wrong. The latter could leave the lander "dead" on the Martian surface. [5 Mars Myths and Misconceptions]

There are three stages that InSight (short for Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) will undergo as it zooms toward the landing site: a rocket-powered trip through Mars' upper atmosphere; a parachute descent after ejecting the lander's protective heat shield; and a powered descent to the ground, slowed by 12 firing engines, according to NASA.First, the "cruise stage" will separate and the capsule will reposition itself so its heat shield faces the atmosphere, where the shield will heat up to more than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees Celsius), Rob Manning, a systems engineer at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said in a video.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/64149-insight-mars-6-minutes-terror.html

[Judi Lynn]

5. 'Mars Is Hard': Tension Rises for NASA's InSight Landing on Red Planet

By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | November 25, 2018 03:24pm ET

NASA's InSight Mars lander is scheduled to touch down on the Red Planet tomorrow afternoon (Nov. 26), and mission team members and agency officials are understandably nervous about the make-or-break moment.

Less than half of all Mars missions, be they orbiters or landers, have aced their Red Planet arrivals over the decades, Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C., noted during a news conference here today (Nov. 25) at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). [NASA's InSight Mars Lander: Full Coverage]

"So, we're of course worried," Zurbuchen said. "We recognize that you never take Mars for granted. Mars is hard."

The difficulty for landed missions stems chiefly from the fact that Mars features both a relatively strong gravitational pull and a wispy atmosphere, which is just 1 percent as thick as that of Earth, said Tom Hoffman, InSight project manager at JPL. So, approaching spacecraft get accelerated to high speeds and then have a hard time dissipating enough energy to slow down before landing, he explained during today's news conference.

More:
https://www.space.com/42529-insight-mars-landing-nasa-tension-high.html