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Nasa first spacecraft built to explore deep inside another world scratched to a landing scheduled for Monday on a vast arid plain on March, carrying instruments to detect planetary heat and seismic the rumblings have never been measured that on the Earth.
After traveling 548 million kilometers (301 million miles) of deep space travel, the InSight landing robot had to land on the dusty, rock-covered surface of the red planet at around 3 pm from the East (20:00 GMT). .
If all goes as planned, InSight will cross the top of the thin Martian atmosphere at 19,310 km / h. Slow motion by friction, the deployment of a giant parachute and retro rockets, InSight will descend in the space of 6 km and a half in a pink Martian sky in 6 and a half minutes, to move at a maximum speed 5 mph (8 km / h).
The stationary probe, launched in May from California, will then stop for 16 minutes to allow dust to settle literally around its surface. landing site, before the disc-shaped solar panels are deployed as wings to power the spacecraft.
the mission control team at Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles hopes to receive a real-time confirmation of the craftThe arrival of data relayed by a pair of miniature satellites launched with InSight and will fly over March.
The JPL controllers also expect to receive a picture of the new probe environment in the smooth, martian plain near the planet's equator, called Elysium Planitia.
The site is about 600 km from the year 2012. landing spot the size of a car March Curiosity rover, the last spacecraft sent to the red planet by NASA.
The smallest, InSight – 360 kg (880 pounds) – its name is an abbreviation for Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transportation – marks the 21st US launch March missions, dating back to the 60's by Mariner. Nearly two dozen others Mars missions were sent by other nations.
InSight will spend 24 months – about a Martian year – to use seismic monitoring and underground temperature readings to unlock mysteries about how March formed and, by extension, the origins of the Earth and other rocky planets of the inner solar system.
Earth tectonics and other forces have erased most of its beginnings, but much of March – about a third of the Earth's size – would have remained largely static, creating a geological time machine for scientists.
The main instrument of InSight is a French-made seismometer, designed to record the smallest vibrations ofMarch"Earthquakes" and meteor impacts around the planet. The device, which must be placed on the surface by the robotic arm of the undercarriage, is so sensitive that it can measure seismic wave just half of the radius of a hydrogen atom.
Scientists expect to see a dozen to 100 Marchearthquakes during the mission, producing data to help them deduce the depth, density and composition of the planet's core, the surrounding rocky mantle and the outermost layer, the earth's crust.
The Nasa Viking probes of the mid-1970s were also equipped with seismometers, but they were bolted to the top of the landing gear, a design that proved largely ineffective.
Apollo missions to the moon also brought seismometers to the lunar surface. But InSight should provide the first significant data on planetary resources. seismic tremors beyond the Earth.
InSight is also equipped with a German-made drill for digging up to 5 meters underground, pulling behind it a rope-shaped heat probe to measure the flowing heat from the inside. inside the planet.
Meanwhile, a radio transmitter will send tracking signals March"Subtle spinning oscillation to reveal the size of the planet's core and eventually if it stays melted.
NASA officials said it would take two to three months for the main instruments to be deployed and put into service.
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