InSight begins looking inside Mars

NASA's InSight Mars lander acquired this image using its robotic arm-mounted, Instrument Deployment Camera (IDC) soon after touchdown. Each IDC image has a field of view of 45 x 45 degrees. Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech

In another milestone event in the global endeavours towards exploring Mars, NASA’s robotic Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) lander successfully touched down on the Red Planet in the early hours of November 27 (IST) after an almost seven-month 458-million-km journey from Earth. This is NASA’s eighth successful landing mission on Mars.

The touchdown was near Mars’ equator on the western side of a flat, smooth expanse of lava called Elysium Planitia, with a signal affirming a completed landing sequence at about 1.23 a.m. IST.

InSight’s two-year mission will be to study the deep interior of the Red Planet to learn how all celestial bodies with rocky surfaces, including Earth and the Moon, formed. “InSight will teach us valuable science as we prepare to send astronauts to the Moon and later to Mars,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.

InSight was launched on May 5. It will operate on the surface for one Martian year, plus 40 Martian days, or sols, until November 24, 2020.   The landing signal was relayed to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, via NASA’s two small experimental Mars Cube One (MarCO) CubeSats, which were launched on the same rocket as InSight and followed the lander to Mars. They are the first CubeSats sent into deep space. After successfully carrying out a number of communications and in-flight navigation experiments, the twin MarCOs were set in position to receive transmissions during InSight’s entry, descent and landing, accordng to JPL’s news release. InSight hit the Martian atmosphere at about 19,800 km/h and the whole sequence to touching down on the surface took only six-and-a-half minutes, said InSight project manager Tom Hoffman of JPL. “During that short span of time, InSight had to autonomously perform dozens of operations and do them flawlessly—and by all indications that is exactly what our spacecraft did,” Hoffman was quoted in the release. InSight’s surface-operations phase began a minute after touchdown and one of its first tasks was to deploy its two decagonal solar arrays, which will provide power. That process was programmed to begin about 16 minutes after landing and take another 16 minutes to complete.

Signals indicating that its solar panels had opened and were collecting sunlight on the Martian surface were relayed to Earth by NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter (launched in 2001 and currently orbiting Mars), which were received at about 7.00 a.m. IST as expected. Odyssey has also relayed a pair of images showing InSight's landing site.

“With the arrays providing the energy we need to start the cool science operations, we are well on our way to thoroughly investigate what’s inside of Mars for the very first time,” Hoffman said. InSight has also begun its surface operations and instrument deployment phase.

InSight’s twin solar arrays are each 2.2 m wide when they are open. Since the lander does not need much power to operate, the low 600-700 W provided by them because of the weaker sunlight on Mars is sufficient to operate the instruments on the lander. Even when Martian dust covers the panels, the arrays would be able to provide 200-300 W. InSight will begin to collect science data within the first week after landing. The deployment of InSight’s 1.8-metre-long robotic arm, which will take images of the Mars landscape, is scheduled to take place during November 29-30. “Landing was thrilling, but I’m looking forward to the drilling,” said InSight principal investigator Bruce Banerdt of JPL.

It will take two to three months before instruments are fully deployed and sending back data. In the meantime, InSight will use its weather sensors and magnetometer to take readings from its landing site at Elysium Planitia.