InSight

[1][11][12] It was manufactured by Lockheed Martin Space, was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL),[13] and two of its three scientific instruments were built by European agencies.InSight's objectives were to place a seismometer, called Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), on the surface of Mars to measure seismic activity and provide accurate 3D models of the planet's interior; and measure internal heat transfer using a heat probe called HP3 to study Mars' early geological evolution.Due to excessive dust on its solar panels preventing it from recharging, NASA put InSight in low-power mode for detecting seismic events in July 2022 and continued monitoring the lander through the operational period ending in December 2022.[12] Managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) with participation from scientists from several countries, the mission was cost-capped at US$425 million, not including launch vehicle funding.[34] A persistent vacuum leak in the CNES-supplied seismometer known as the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) led NASA to postpone the planned launch in March 2016 to May 2018.[39] On 23 January 2018, after a long storage, its solar panels were once again deployed and tested, and a second silicon chip containing 1.6 million names from the public was added to the lander.Elysium Planitia, the landing site of InSight, has experienced fewer cleaning events than needed to keep the science operations powered.In February 2021, at the start of the Martian winter, InSight's solar cells were producing 27% of capacity due to a thick covering of dust on the panels.Seismology is the method that we've used to gain almost everything we know, all the basic information about the interior of the Earth, and we also used it back during the Apollo era to understand and to measure sort of the properties of the inside of the moon.By combining this data, the core size was constrained, because the change in axis of rotation over 20 years allowed a precession rate and from that the planet's moment of inertia to be estimated.[55] InSight's measurements of crust thickness, mantle viscosity, core radius and density, and seismic activity were planned to result in a three- to tenfold increase in accuracy compared to previous data.[56] It is also expected that frequent meteor airbursts (10–200 detectable events per year for InSight) will provide additional seismo-acoustic signals to probe the interior of Mars.[59] The mission's secondary objective was to conduct an in-depth study of geophysics, tectonic activity and the effect of meteorite impacts on Mars, which could provide knowledge about such processes on Earth.Measurements of crust thickness, mantle viscosity, core radius and density, and seismic activity should result in a three- to tenfold increase in accuracy compared to current data.[61][62] As per estimates, there may be enough water, trapped in tiny cracks and pores of rock in the middle of the Martian crust, to fill oceans on the planet’s surface.[71] RISE uses the radio communication equipment on the lander and on Earth to measure the overall movement of planet Mars that could reveal the size and density of its core.[94] On 28 February 2018, InSight was shipped via C-17 cargo aircraft from the Lockheed Martin Space building in Denver to Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in order to be integrated to the launch vehicle.InSight was originally scheduled for launch on 4 March 2016 on an Atlas V 401 (4 meter fairing/zero (0) solid rocket boosters/single (1) engine Centaur) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, U.S.,[96] but was called off in December 2015 due to a vacuum leak on the SEIS instrument.[1] The cruise stage that carries the lander includes solar panels, antenna, star trackers, Sun sensor, inertial measurement unit among its technologies.[102] On 26 November 2018, at approximately 19:53 UTC, mission controllers received a signal via the Mars Cube One (MarCO) satellites that the spacecraft had successfully touched down[16] at Elysium Planitia.[16] A few hours after landing, NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter relayed signals indicating that InSight's solar panels had successfully unfurled and are generating enough electrical power to recharge its batteries daily.[100] As InSight's science goals are not related to any particular surface feature of Mars, potential landing sites were chosen on the basis of practicality.Candidate sites needed to be near the equator of Mars to provide sufficient sunlight for the solar panels year round, have a low elevation to allow for sufficient atmospheric braking during EDL, be flat and relatively rock-free to reduce the probability of complications during landing, and have soft enough terrain to allow the heat flow probe to penetrate well into the ground.[109] On 26 November 2018, the spacecraft successfully touched down at its landing site,[16] and in early December 2018 InSight lander and EDL components were imaged from space on the surface of Mars.[121] On 24 February 2020, a summary of studies over the past year from InSight was presented which indicated that the planet Mars has active quakes, dust devils and magnetic pulses.[122][123] In February 2020, according to new data gathered from NASA's InSight lander, it was found that the Martian magnetic field at the landing site is about 10 times stronger than previously thought, and fluctuates rapidly.[53] The seismometer (SEIS), radio experiment (RISE) and the weather instruments (TWINS) continue to operate as the lander's Mars surface mission was extended by two years, until end of December 2022.In October 2019, the researchers at JPL concluded that the soil on Mars does not provide necessary friction for drilling, causing the mole to bounce around and form a wide pit around itself rather than dig deeper.[144] On 14 January 2021, the heat probe part of the mission was declared to be over, after the science team had determined that the soil properties at the landing location were incompatible with what the instrument had been designed for.The science team assigned to InSight includes scientists from institutions in the U.S., France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Japan, Switzerland, Spain, Poland and the United Kingdom.