Insight Has Left Earth
Insight Is On Its Way To Mars (with video)
“An Atlas V rocket lifted off at 7:05 a.m. EDT (4:05 a.m. PDT) from Space Launch Complex 3 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, carrying NASA’s InSight spacecraft. The rocket is on its way, carrying NASA’s Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) to begin its six month voyage to Mars.”
NASA Deep Space CubeSats Are Alive And Well
“Mars Cube One, or MarCO, is a pair of briefcase-sized spacecraft that launched along with NASA’s InSight Mars lander at 4:05 a.m. PDT (7:05 a.m. EDT) today from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Central California.”
Great news! Please keep including launches such as this and Space X. Certainly politics has a needed place here, but I really love the launches where the rubber meets the road for real progress.
Or where the rubber leaves the road, at least in the case of the Tesla.
Or, in the case of SpaceShipTwo?
Congratulations to ULA and JPL for a successful launch. Now lets hope the landing comes off just as well.
Also the Dragon has landed with around 3800 lbs of scientific stuff. More benefits for everyone from reusable space equipment.
Ad LEO! (And return) Ad LUNA! AD ARES! AD ASTRA!
I saw InSight flying southward from North Scottsdale, AZ, to me it was a fairly fast moving reddish orange streak from the 1st stage, by the time the Centaur 2nd stage lit it was getting lower in the SSW sky and starting to get lost in glare from city lights. It reminded me somewhat of when I saw STS 107 upon reentry from here before the accident occurred or was starting to occur.
From my home in SW Florida (Naples) I’d watch the NASA site with the predicted ground track of many returning STS missions. We’d frequently hear the double boom when the Shuttle’s path allowed.
Great way to advertise our presence in space.
Great launch! Congratulations to NASA. What a great way to celebrate the 57th Anniversity of Alan Shepard’s Mercury flight!
And, best of all, accompanied by ultra-cheap interplanetary cubesats!
Those particular CubeSats weren’t “ultra” cheap. I haven’t seen the budget, but from what I’ve seen in conference presentations, I’m guessing they cost over $10 million. The main payload, for example, is a deep space radio. You can buy the transponder from a corporate partner for $1 million per item. Then there’s the development cost. They also have to navigate them to Mars, and those expenses don’t care how big or small the spacecraft is.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge fan of small spacecraft and CubeSats. But, unlike the typical, Earth-orbiting ones, MarCO cost more than a house. (Literally. The median price for a house here in Boulder is pushing $1 million. A good 3U CubeSat bus, with 1U for spacecraft systems and 2U free for payload, from a company in Boulder goes for $500,000. But that’s an Earth orbiting one.)
Yeah, those things need deployable high gain antennas just to communicate. I doubt those will be “ultra cheap” to design, build, and test.