InSight to the Mars Landing - Science in the News

November 26^th marked a new event in the saga of human space exploration with NASA’s successful landing of its InSight Lander on the Mars.

The InSight Lander is a stationary, yet sophisticated, probe that uses various scientific principles to study the completely unknown, on a little explored planet: what lies deep beneath the surface of Mars. InSight is short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport – this official name captures the technology used in the probe. The sensors on the craft take seismic, temperature, and radiological readings from the Mars interior.

So far, most geological understanding of Mars has been gleaned by studying geological surface evidence such as volcanos, mountains, and canyons. It is hoped that InSight deep sensors, will expand scientific understanding of not just the formation of Mars, but the understanding of similar rocky planets such as Earth and how such planets formed. Because Mars formed around the same time as Earth, but much smaller and therefore less geologically active, it is hoped that Mars will be a kind of “time capsule” that will give clues to what the Earth was like billions of years ago before the geological activity here changed our planet.

Launched on May 5^th, 2018, the InSight spacecraft travelled an astonishing 300-million miles over six-and-a-half months to its final destination on the Red Planet. InSight was carried into space aboard an Atlas V rocket, launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base. Vandenberg Air Base a favored launch site of many space craft, including the famous SpaceX’s Falcon rockets, but this marked the first time an interplanetary craft was launched from the West Coast. Interestingly, two test satellites were launched on the same rocket as InSight. These test craft were part of the Mars Cube One mission, a parallel mission that tested if miniaturized space craft can survive the journey to mars, and so far the mini-craft have performed well also.

Less than half of all human missions to Mars are successful, because the lack of Martian atmosphere makes the landing approach difficult to control. Because Martial atmosphere is only 1% as thin as Earth’s, the spacecraft approach the surface at a much faster velocity. As such, NASA has designed InSight to be very rugged, and used both tried and tested spacecraft technology in its landing approach.

To find out more about InSight landing and it's mission NASA has created a webpage for new and updates.