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The NASA Space Shuttle InSight, the first robotic lander designed to study the depths of a distant world, sits on the surface of Mars on Monday, with instruments to detect the rumblings planetary seismics never measured elsewhere than on Earth.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles applauded, applauded and embraced while receiving signals confirming the arrival of InSight on the Martian soil – a vast arid plain near the sea. Planet of Equator – shortly before 3:00 pm EST (2000 GMT). [19659002] A few minutes later, the JPL controllers received a fuzzy "selfie" photo of the new probe environment on the red planet, showing the edge of a landing leg next to it. a rock.
museums, libraries and other public places around the world, including Times Square, where a small crowd of 40 or 50 people braved the rain to attend the show on a giant television screen affixed on a wall of the Nasdaq building.
InSight's descent and landing, consisting of approximately 1,000 steps to be executed without error, made it possible to complete a six-month journey at 548 million km (301 million miles) of the earth.
The satellite was launched in California in May for a mission of nearly a billion dollars. He will spend the next 24 months – about a Martian year – gathering a wealth of data to solve mysteries about the formation of Mars and, by extension, about the origins of the Earth and other rocky planets of the internal solar system. .
InSight acquired this image of the surface of Mars. This was the area in front of the LG.
(Reuters)
"If we dig in Mars, it's to better understand not only Mars, but the Earth itself," said Bruce Banerdt, JPL's senior researcher. A central question is why Mars, once a relatively hot and humid planet, has evolved so differently from the Earth in an essentially dry, desolate and cold world, devoid of life.
The answers seem to have something to do with the unexplained absence, since the ancient past of Mars, of a magnetic field or a tectonic activity, said the chief scientist of NASA, James Green.
While Earth's Tectonics and Other Forces Erased Most Evidence of Its Inception, Much of Mars – about a third of the Earth's size – apparently remained largely static, thus creating a geological time machine for scientists, Green said.
InSight and the upcoming March rover mission, slated for 2020, are both seen as precursors to the possible human exploration of Mars, a goal that NASA's director, Jim Bridenstine, said Monday, could be reached in the mid-2030s. [19659002] Daredevil Landing
InSight is the eighth spacecraft to have landed successfully on Mars, all operated by NASA.
The three-legged lander insinuated into the thin Martian atmosphere at 12,300 km (19,300) km / h and plunged to the surface in less than seven minutes, slowed down by atmospheric friction , a giant parachute and retro rockets.
The fixed probe was programmed to stop for 16 minutes to allow dust to settle, literally, around its landing site, before two disk-shaped solar panels were deployed as wings to power the spacecraft.
But scientists did not expect to verify the proper deployment of solar panels for less than several hours.
InSight – its name is the abbreviation of Inner Intelligence, Inland Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport – marks the 21st Mars mission launched by the United States, going back to overflight from Mariner in the 1960s.
Nearly two dozen other missions on Mars were sent by other countries.
The new home of InSight in the middle of Elysium Planitia, a vast, relatively smooth expanse close to the planet's equator, lies about 600 km from the place of the Curiosity's 2012 landing, the last gear of the size of a car, at the size of a car. sent to the red planet by NASA.
Looking Below the Surface
The main instrument of InSight is a French-made seismometer, designed to record the slightest vibrations caused by the "marsquakes" and the meteor impacts around the planet. The device, which must be placed on the surface by the robotic arm of the LG, is so sensitive that it can measure a seismic wave barely half the radius of an atomic dome. # 39; hydrogen.
Scientists expect to see a dozen to 100 marsquakes during the mission. produce data to help them deduce the depth, density and composition of the planet's core, from the surrounding rocky mantle to the outermost layer, the crust.
The NASA Viking probes of the mid-1970s were also equipped with seismometers. but they were bolted to the top of the landers, a design that proved largely ineffective.
The Apollo missions on the Moon also brought seismometers to the lunar surface. But InSight should provide the first useful data on planetary seismic tremors beyond the Earth.
A second instrument, provided by the German Space Agency, consists of a drill digging into the ground up to 5 meters deep, pulling behind it. a rope-shaped heat probe to measure the heat that circulates from inside the planet.
Meanwhile, a radio transmitter will send signals that follow the subtle ripple of the Mars rotation to reveal the size of the planet's nucleus and eventually determine whether it remains melted. [19659002] NASA officials said the main instruments would be deployed and put into service within two to three months.
flying over Mars when he reached his destination.
The twinning "Cubesats" for the flight to Mars was the first space-based use of a miniature satellite technology that space engineers consider a promising and inexpensive alternative to some larger vehicles and more complex.
First published: Nov. 27, 2018 07:28 IST
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