InSight lander prepares to touch down on Mars
105 views · Published 25 November 2018 · 5:17 · Indexed 16 October 2026
Channel: AP Archive · 2018 · News & Politics
(20 Nov 2018) LEADIN: Mars is about to get its first U.S. visitor in years. NASA's InSight spacecraft touches down on the Red Planet on Monday (26 November 2018). The landing will crown a six-month, 300 million-mile journey to Mars. InSight is the first American robot to visit since the Curiosity rover in 2012, and the first craft dedicated to exploring beneath the planet's surface. STORYLINE: It's a high-tech mission with an old-school feel. A three-legged, one-armed robotic geologist known as Insight will speed through the fiery Martian skies, using tried-and-tested technology to slow its descent. When it reaches the surface, the spacecraft will use rigid tripod legs, to mimic the landings of earlier successful missions. InSight Engineer Julie Wertz Chen says they're ready: "And then, once we've entered the atmosphere, the drag in the atmosphere slows us down, heats us up, and the heat shield protects us during that time. Once we've gotten down to a low enough speed, we'll deploy a parachute, the parachute will slow us down even more. We'll get rid of that heat shield, that lets us deploy our lander legs, turn on our radar. At that point, we can separate from the parachute and we propulsively fire our thrusters to slow us down even further and then we land directly on our legs right onto the surface of Mars." But that's where traditional methods end, on this $1 billion U.S.-European effort to examine the insides of Mars. InSight Engineer Ravi Pakrash says: "InSight is the first mission that's going to study the deep interior of Mars. So, what we've done in the past is send rovers and landers that really explore the geology of Mars, the chemistry of the surface, what kind of rocks are there. We're going to explore the deep interior and try to understand how active are the quakes on Mars - we call them Mars quakes, not earthquakes - and then we're also sending a probe that's going to drill into Mars about 10 to 15 feet and it's going to understand the heat that flows from the core of Mars. And so, all this information will help us understand is there a liquid core, a solid core? How did Mars form as a planet? And this will help us understand how Earth as well as any rocky planet in our universe formed." Flight controllers in California have to determine the coast is clear at the landing site - fairly flat and rock free. Ravi Pakrash takes an overall view. "So, I'm what you call a systems engineer, so I think big picture. There's a lot of experts that are really into one specific part of the spacecraft and I take a step back and I say; 'Okay, how do all the pieces fit together and let's make sure that they're all going to work once we're on the surface of Mars.'" It's six years since the last Mars landing - so the pressure is on. "Once the spacecraft lands, that's when a lot of us who have been working on what we call the surface mission take over. And so, we want to make sure that the spacecraft is healthy on the first few days after landing. So, are we getting enough energy from the sun? Did everything survive that big long journey from Earth? And then we want to start deploying our instruments on Mars. So that's a pretty involved process that involves taking lots of images, doing lots of checkouts and then the arm that you see behind me, this is going to pick up the instruments that are on top of the lander and then put them on the surface of Mars exactly where we want it to be," says Pakrash. When the conditions are right, InSight's 6-foot (1.8-meter) arm will remove the instruments from the deck of the lander and place them directly on the Martian surface. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APArchives Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/ You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/c1ab20f53737c9f869cd34ed8974d3c6
