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Space & Planetary Science

Payload Problems May Delay Mars InSight Launch (Update)

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
December 3, 2015
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Payload Problems May Delay Mars InSight Launch (Update)

Keith’s 3 Dec 10:33 am ET note: Consideration is being given to delaying the launch of NASA’s Mars InSight lander mission. The problem has to do with the French seismometer. There is a persistent leak inside the seismometer that has been hard to fix. Given that this payload is one of the two prime functions of InSight if the issue is not resolved in the next month or so then the launch will be slipped until the next favorable Mars launch window opens. I am awaiting a formal statement from NASA PAO.
NASA Mars InSight Team Addressing Vacuum Leak on Key Science Instrument, NASA
“A key science instrument that will be carried aboard NASA’s Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) spacecraft being prepared for launch in March 2016 is experiencing a leak in the vacuum container carrying its main sensors. The sensors are part of an instrument called the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), which is provided by the French Space Agency (CNES).”
NASA Mars mission suffers problem with key instrument, Nature
“Technicians have detected a small leak in the vacuum-sealed sphere that holds the instrument’s three seismometers, NASAWatch reported and NASA confirmed on 3 December. The leak must be fixed for the mission to accomplish its science goals. CNES engineers are working to repair it before shipping the instrument to the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to be installed in the spacecraft and tested.”

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8 responses to “Payload Problems May Delay Mars InSight Launch (Update)”

  1. Byron says:
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    I certainly hope there is not a problem here. Four weeks ago, my wife Karen and I attended a presentation by InSight Principal Investigator Dr. Bruce Banerdt, at the Lunar & Planetary Institute in Houston. Here is a link to the presentation: https://www.youtube.com/wat… .

  2. TheBrett says:
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    That would suck. I was really looking forward to Insight, especially since it was coming up in the relatively near future.

  3. Michael Spencer says:
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    With the success we’ve had with rovers I wonder why another stationary probe is being launched?

    Perhaps it is the difficulty of combining certain activities with the exigencies of a lander– drilling, for instance. But Phoenix returned- what? pictures of small rocks and knowledge that thee’s some ice below the surface? (OK, it was a relatively inexpensive project).

    Still with the stationary probes the ‘luck of the draw’- aka the landing site- can be a huge disappointment.

    • AnonymousFourEyedCoward says:
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      InSight will, for the very first time, deploy two instruments to the surface from its deck. One instrument, the one with the problems, is a highly sensitive seismometer which needs to remain fixed in place for a Martian year. The other instrument is would penetrate several meters into the surface using a “mole” (think self-hammering nail) to measure the heat flow from the Martian interior. It, too, needs to be in one place for an extended period of time. Neither instrument can be operated from a rover.

      • fcrary says:
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        The heat flow measurement isn’t immune to landing in the wrong place. Mars isn’t geologically active (to the best of our knowledge) but I’d be surprised if the geothermal heat flux is uniform across the planet. Also, depending on the subsurface properties, the drill depth may not be deep enough to avoid seasonal effects. That wouldn’t preclude the geothermal heat flux measurement, but it would drive up the error bars.

    • EtOH says:
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      Stationary probes are a rational part of the exploration ecosystem. Often we are sufficiently ignorant about a scientific question that our knowledge may be substantially improved by tests in a single location. Especially when it isn’t yet known whether the instruments chosen will be appropriate, significantly cheaper stationary landers make sense as a first step, with rovers for follow-on studies.

      Phoenix is a good example. Note the danger of judging a mission solely by its pictures; Phoenix was primarily a soil/ice chemistry mission, and its discoveries, especially the presence of perchlorates, were significant. Furthermore, it could have made those same discoveries almost anywhere in the vast flat plain to which it had been targeted.

      The InSight mission will not produce any inspiring images (it doesn’t even have a color camera). Like the recent Maven orbiter, it is precisely targeted to answer a handful of important questions that we currently have no data on. InSight’s primary instruments, a seismometer and heat flow probe, cannot be moved once set up, and since they are targeted at Mars’s deep geology, it matters little where on the surface they are. As such it is entirely rational to use a stationary probe for these investigations.

    • fcrary says:
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      A rover won’t necessarily solve this problem. I understand the data from the Curiosity/REMS instrument (basically a weather station) didn’t quite come out as expected. Gale crater is deep enough to have its own microclimate, so connecting the REMS measurements to atmospheric observations from orbit is problematic. Curiosity doesn’t have anything like the range to do anything about that.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Thank you all for the explanation.