[ad_1]
The Insight probe is expected to reach Mars tonight to explore the interior of the planet and see if it has a solid core.
The Atlas 5 rocket, carrying an "Insight" probe in May, was launched on Mars for the first information gathering mission on the planet.
The NASA spacecraft has not been launched since Cape Canaveral, Florida, as usual, but from the west coast of the United States.
In a report published by the German newspaper "Welt", the author of the probe "Insight" on the surface of Mars and the difficulties that could prevent the probe to carry out its mission.
"There is concern that the probe will not tolerate high temperatures when it enters the red planet's atmosphere," said Tom Hoffman, director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Insight Mission project. He also expressed his fear of falling, hoping that the probe would launch its rockets as soon as possible.
The rockets reduced the speed of the probe to 8 km / h before touching the surface of the planet.
The probe is expected to land in the region of "Elysium Platina", almost devoid of pits and pebbles.
"The Insight will land in a new region of Mars that no one has seen yet," said NASA Space Shuttle spokesman Jim Singer.
Researcher at the Planetary Research Institute of the German Aviation and Space Center Tillman Chbon said that to discover a planet, you had to see it inside.
The German center contributed to the Insight probe project with a tool that enters Mars.
It is planned to drill this tool in the depths of the planet at a maximum depth of five meters, then send heat pulses to the foreground, The sensors then determine the time required for the treatment of the soil cooling. In this way, scientists will see if the Martian soil transmits heat well or not.
Mars does not have a magnetic field at the moment, but it may have been in the past.
The Insight probe is accompanied by additional probes called CubeSat that send radio signals to the Earth when Insight enters the Martian atmosphere.
Source link
