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By Steve Gorman
PASADENA, Calif. (Reuters) – NASA's InSight spacecraft, the first robotically designed lander to study the deep background of a distant world, instruments designed to detect planetary seismic rumblings have never been measured except on Earth.
Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles burst out with applause and hugs while receiving signals confirming arrival of InSight on Martian soil – a vast arid plain near the city of Los Angeles. Planet of the Planet – shortly before 3 pm A few minutes later, the controllers of the JPL received a fuzzy "selfie" photo of the new probe environment on the red planet, showing the edge of a leg landing gear near a rock.
TV nights for NASA's live television Coverage of the event was held in museums, libraries and other public places around the world, including Times Square where a small crowd of 40 or 50 people turned a pouring rain to watch broadcast on a giant Nasdaq wall-mounted television screen.
The InSight descent and landing, consisting of approximately 1,000 individual marches that had to be flawlessly executed to succeed, completed a six-month journey at 301 million miles (548 million km) from the Earth.
launched from 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. .
"The reason we dig in Mars is to better understand not only Mars, but the Earth itself," said Bruce Banerdt of JPL, principal investigator of InSight.
One of the central questions is why Mars, a relatively hot and humid planet, has evolved so different from the Earth into a mostly arid, desolate and cold world, devoid of life.
It is thought that the answers have a connection with the unexplained absence, since the ancient past of Mars, of a magnetic field or tectonic activity, said the chief scientist of the NASA, James Green.
While terrestrial tectonics and other forces erased most of the early evidence, much of Mars, about one-third the size of the Earth, remained largely static, creating a geology. time machine
InSight and the upcoming rover Mars mission, scheduled for 2020, are both seen as precursors to the eventual human exploration of Mars, a goal that NASA's director , Jim Bridenstine, said Monday, could be reached as early as the mid-2030s.
DAREDEVIL LANDING
InSight is the eighth spacecraft to have landed successfully on Mars, all operated by NASA.
This three-foot lander hit the thin Martian atmosphere at 12,300 miles (19,795). km) per hour and plummeted to the surface in seven minutes, after a slowdown due to 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 disc-shaped solar panels were installed. deployed as wings to power the spaceship.
But scientists did not expect to verify the proper deployment of solar panels. For at least several hours.
InSight (360 kg), its abbreviated name for Inland Exploration using seismic surveys, geodesy and heat transport, marks the 21st Mars mission launched by the United States, which dates back to the maritime fly. -1960s.
Nearly two dozen other missions on Mars were sent from other countries.
The new home of InSight in the middle of Elysium Planitia, a vast, relatively smooth expanse near the planet's equator, is about 373 Curiosity, the last spacecraft sent to the red planet by NASA, at the distance of the 2012 landing center, [20129003] PEERING BENEATH SURFACE
The main instrument of InSight is a French-made seismometer, designed to record the slightest vibrations "marsquakes" and 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.
NASA's 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 to bury up to 5 meters underground, pulling back. 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 rotational ripple of Mars to reveal the size of the planet's nucleus and eventually determine whether it remains melted. [19659003] NASA officials say it will take two to three months for the main instruments to be deployed and put into service.
Landing data and initial photography were relayed to Earth by two suitcase-sized satellites launched with InSight. flying over Mars when he reached his destination. The "Cubesats" twinning used for the flight to Mars was the first space-based use of a miniature satellite technology that industry engineers consider a promising and inexpensive alternative to some larger and larger vehicles. complex.
by Steve Gorman in Pasadena; additional story by Pavithra George at Pasadena, edited by Michael Perry and Tom Brown)
This story was not edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
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