Mars inSight Mission

[Eric Mc]

Just a heads up to remind people that this mission is scheduled to land on Mars on November 26.

[Beati Dogu]

Yes, cool. I hope it makes it down OK.

They plan to land it relatively close to the Curiosity lander - about 600 kilometers (373 miles) away.

[funkyrobot]

Thanks for the heads up Eric. Will try to watch this on NASA tv.

[Beati Dogu]

Here's some NASA InSight hype:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S42s1s3U77A


They want it to land on the Elysium Planitia, which is just north of the Martian equator. It's flatter than a Walmart car park in Kansas apparently.

[Eric Mc]

They aren't looking for dramatic scenery or spectacular geology on this mission. They want a nice smooth surface that they can set down on and do some serious drilling. It will be the deepest drilling done on another planetary body since the Apollo astronauts took core samples on the moon.

[Eric Mc]

NASA briefing here. It's best advised to ignore the typically moronic utterances in the comments section.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzBkCVGwWsg

[DeejRC]

Que- this Insight?

[Beati Dogu]

Heat shield, then parachute, then propulsive landing.

See the video I posted above.

[Eric Mc]

No need for a sky crane on this one as it is a relatively small lander.

[Einion Yrth]

Animation of landing

[RizzoTheRat]

That animation is beautiful.


Nice summary of the mission from the Oatmeal
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/insight

[Beati Dogu]

^ Thanks for that.

They were talking about this mission on Radio 4 yesterday and mentioned that there's only a 40% success rate for landing things on Mars.

[Eric Mc]

Not if you only look at NASA's missions. NASA has a pretty good success rate. It's the other agencies that have fared less well.

[Beati Dogu]

Very true. I like your optimism.

The Russian's haven't had a lot of luck & the European Space Agency has a 2:0 failure rate - Beagle 2 and Schiaparelli.



InSight is essentially repeating the landing method that NASA's Viking landers used in the mid-70s.

I remember seeing those amazing pictures of Mars from the Viking missions in National Geographic as a kid. I wish I still had it.

[Eric Mc]

InSight is actually a developed version of the Mars Phoenix lander which successfully landed on Mars back in 2008. It uses the basic "bus" of the Phoenix but with a different set of experiments on board. Phoenix was designed to sample the Mars environment near its polar regions. InSight will be landing closer to the equator and is primarilly a geological and geophysical mission.

NASA sent its first probes to Mars in 1964, so it has a very long track record of sending missions to the planet.
From memory,the only NASA Mars lander that failed during the landing phase was Mars Polar Lander back in 1999. All their other landers have made it safely on to the surface -

Viking 1
Viking 2
Mars Pathfinder
Phoenix
Opportunity
Spirit
Curiosity

[Beati Dogu]

The NASA TV Broadcast of the landing is on Monday 26th November (7.00 pm - 8.30 pm UK time)

The post-landing press conference = No earlier than 10.00 pm UK time


https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html#...

..or a hosted broadcast with Everyday Astronaut:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRj3la_i9a4


The entry and landing takes about 7 minutes.

Edit: it takes just over 8 minutes for a radio signal to travel between Mars & Earth currently.

Here’s a breakdown of the landing procedure:

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/20...

Edited by Beati Dogu on Monday 26th November 00:24

[andy_s]

Bump

[Eric Mc]

andy_s said:

Bump

I hope that's not a prediction.

[andy_s]

Eric Mc said:

andy_s said:

Bump

I hope that's not a prediction.

[Caruso]

Looking forward to this. An exciting landing at a sensible time of day.