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This artist’s concept depicts the smooth, flat ground that dominates InSight’s landing ellipse in the Elysium Planitia region of Mars. Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech.
NASA has chosen an area in the Elysium Planitia – high plains near the Martian equator – as the site for the landing of the InSight spacecraft later this month (November 26, 2018). Of 22 sites considered, only Elysium Planitia met the basic engineering constraints, and was also neither too rocky or too windy.
Previous missions to Mars have investigated the planet’s surface by studying its canyons, volcanoes, rocks and soil. But InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) is a three-legged lander – not a rover – and will remain wherever it touches down. Its mission is sensing and studying evidence buried far below the planet’s surface to study the deep interior of Mars. Tom Hoffman is InSight project manager at JPL. Hoffman said in a statement:
For the first time ever, the evaluation for a Mars landing site had to consider what lay below the surface of Mars. We needed not just a safe place to land, but also a workspace that’s penetrable by our 16-foot-long (5-meter) heat-flow probe.
The landing site for InSight, in relation to landing sites for seven previous missions, is shown on a topographic map of Mars. Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech.
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NASA said that the site also needs to be bright enough and warm enough to power the solar cells while keeping its electronics within temperature limits for an entire Martian year (26 Earth months). So the team focused on a band around the equator, where the lander’s solar array would have adequate sunlight to power its systems year-round. Finding an area that would be safe enough for InSight to land and then deploy its solar panels and instruments without obstructions took a little longer. Hoffman said:
The site has to be a low-enough elevation to have sufficient atmosphere above it for a safe landing, because the spacecraft will rely first on atmospheric friction with its heat shield and then on a parachute digging into Mars’ tenuous atmosphere for a large portion of its deceleration. And after the chute has fallen away and the braking rockets have kicked in for final descent, there needs to be a flat expanse to land on – not too undulating and relatively free of rocks that could tip the tri-legged Mars lander.
The site is an 81-mile long, 17-mile-wide (130-km-long, 27-km-wide) landing ellipse on the western edge of a flat, smooth expanse of lava plain.
Bruce Banerdt is InSight principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. Banerdt said:
If you were a Martian coming to explore Earth’s interior like we are exploring Mars’ interior, it wouldn’t matter if you put down in the middle of Kansas or the beaches of Oahu. While I’m looking forward to those first images from the surface, I am even more eager to see the first data sets revealing what is happening deep below our landing pads. The beauty of this mission is happening below the surface. Elysium Planitia is perfect.
This map shows the single area under continuing evaluation as the InSight mission’s Mars landing site, as of a year before the mission’s May 2016 launch. The finalist ellipse marked is within the northern portion of flat-lying Elysium Planitia about four degrees north of Mars’ equator. Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech.
After a 205-day journey that began on May 5, 2018, NASA’s InSight mission will touch down on Mars on November 26. Its solar panels will unfurl within a few hours of touchdown.
Bottom line: NASA has chosen Elysium Planitia as the landing site for the InSight spacecraft’s touchdown on November 26, 2018.
Via NASA
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