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OUT OF THIS WORLD | What's Up In Space – The Biggest News From Space On Earth
Scott Sutherland
Meteorologist / Scientific Editor
Thursday, November 8, 2018, 1:32 pm – The new NASA InSight lander is expected to land on Mars a few weeks ago, as part of a historic mission that will give us our first glimpse of the heart of the red planet and our best insight into the weather on Mars .
Monday, November 26, 2018, around 15 hours. Time East on Earth, the robotic population of the planet Mars should be multiplied by one.
It is at this time that NASA's latest explorer, the InSight Lander, is expected to land on the flat volcanic plain known as the Elysium Planitia. According to NASA, its mission is "to study the processes that shaped the rock planets of the internal solar system more than four billion years ago".
(RELATED:
NASA's InSight is just weeks away from its terrible fall in the Mars atmosphere. See his seven minutes of terror here.)
WHAT IS INSIGHT?
InSight, which means
Interior Exploration using
Sepic
Investigations,
gdeodorization and
Heat
Transport, is a robotic lander, similar to the missions of the past Viking, Pathfinder and Phoenix. Rather than rolling to the surface, as Opportunity and Curiosity rovers do, InSight will not move from its landing point, remaining perfectly still, fulfilling its mission using a set of sensors.
The most important of them is his
Seismic experience for interior structure, or SEIS, which will be placed on the Martian surface, next to the lander, to detect tremors in the ground.
This artist representation represents NASA's Insight Lander on the surface of Mars. The various scientific instruments of the LG are tagged, the SEIS being visible on the ground, next to the undercarriage, protected by the "wind-shield and thermal" dome-shaped (WTS). Click or tap the image to learn more about the Insights instrument array. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
Here on Earth, seismologists have used earthquake-triggered motion waves to describe the interior of the planet, with its different layers – the earth's crust, the upper and lower mantle, as well as the outer and outer faces. interior. heart.
This is based on the fact that these seismic waves move at different speeds depending on the type of "material" they pass through. Thus, by detecting an earthquake from different parts of the world, they can use the time required for the earthquake to reach specific sensors to determine the types of material traversed by these vibrations.
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Using these same methods, InSight scientists will be able to use earthquakes on Mars, which they call "marsquakes", to get an idea of what the inside of the planet looks like. .
If we already have an excellent idea of what the interior of the Earth looks like, what is the point of probing the interior of another rocky world?
According to NASA:
Because Mars was less geologically active than the Earth (for example, it does not have plate tectonics), it does retain a more complete record of its history in its own basic planetary building blocks: its core, his coat and his crust.
By studying the size, thickness, density and overall structure of the core, mantle and crust of the red planet, as well as the rate at which heat escapes from the inside From the planet, the InSight mission will give insight into the evolutionary processes of all the planets in the inner solar system.
No plate technique? WHERE DO THE MARQUETS COME?
This is true. Mars is not tectonically active.
Unlike the Earth, Mars does not have crustal pieces that move and move together to produce earthquakes. This is due to the size of the planet. Although smaller than Earth, the heat of the interior of Mars has escaped much faster in space. This is why it is generally thought that the interior of the planet is dormant.
One of the pieces of evidence we already have is the lack of a planetary magnetic field around Mars. The Earth's magnetic field, which protects us from the solar wind, is generated by the agitated circulation of metals in the melted outer core of the planet. As Mars does not have a planetary magnetic field, it is very likely that its nucleus is completely solid or that it has cooled to the point of moving only very slowly.
So, how are the marsquakes going? The best assumptions for the moment are:
• they may be due to shrinkage of the planet, even slightly, while the inside continues to cool (yeah! Mars may be smaller!), Or
• pockets of magma rising to the surface (if there are still large pockets of magma inside the planet), or
• by
meteorite strikes.
When a meteoroid dives into the Earth's atmosphere, it produces a bright flash of light when it compresses the air in its path. The enormous pressure on the meteoroid by this compressed air usually causes fragmentation of the rock, sometimes explosively.
"However, on Mars, we believe that the meteoroids can not necessarily fully burn when they encounter the Martian atmosphere," wrote Katarina Miljkovic, planetary scientist at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, who collaborated with the InSight mission.
The conversation. "It's just because the atmosphere of Mars is less dense than that of the Earth. Thus, incoming meteoroids have a higher penetration power. These impact events would produce seismic disturbances in the atmosphere, and probably also in the soil. "
As Mars is pretty close to the asteroid belt, it is probably hit by meteorite impacts on a fairly regular basis. InSight will be able to detect these strikes and use the seismic vibrations generated by them to probe the inside of the planet.
According to NASA, we have seismic data on the old Viking 1 and 2 landers, which landed on Mars in 1976. However, the Viking 1 instrument failed and even after 500 days of Martian operation, the aircraft did not land. Viking 2 seismic instrument has detected only one seismic potential. Event. Since the Viking 2 instrument did not actually touch the ground, it detected much more wind noise.
As the InSight SEIS instrument is placed directly on Martian soil, it should be able to detect the most sensitive vibrations, while being protected from the wind by its hemispherical envelope.
Artistic representation of the InSight lander operating on the surface of Mars. Credits: NASA / JPL-Caltech
(RELATED:
The InSight Landing is just one of five amazing space events that take place before the end of 2018. Check them out here!)
WEATHER STATION ON MARCH!
The InSight SEIS instrument being so sensitive, not only is it protected from ambient winds by a dome, but the mission team is not risking anything.
As the mission decided to give the LG the ability to separate the effects of wind and pressure from the data collected by SEIS, the mission decided to give Martian weather a chance to interfere with its quest. of earthquakes.
As a result, extraterrestrial weather lovers receive a bonus –
a weather station on Mars!
Not only that, but it's the very first
weather station with continuous monitoringnever put on Mars.
Previous missions – Viking, Pathfinder and Phoenix – have collected meteorological data. The Curiosity rover still collects temperature and pressure records from Gale Crater, but none of this data is collected continuously, just like weather stations on Earth.
Since SEIS collects seismic data continuously, and the scientific team will need to know if anything is interfering with this data, the InSight weather station, formerly known as
Auxiliary payload sensor, or APSS – will also collect data continuously.
So it's a first on Mars!
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APSS includes:
• Temperature and winds for InSight, or TWINS, a reconditioning of the Curiosity map
The REMS instruments (Rover Environmental Monitoring Station), with two sensors placed at opposite ends of the landing gear platform, and
• A centrally mounted, ultra-sensitive pressure instrument designed to detect minute fluctuations in Mars' extremely thin atmosphere.
At the same time, the lander will use his instruments and cameras to document the cirrus clouds that grow well above Elysium Planitia, the ground fog cases, the dust devils and perhaps even phenomena weather that may affect other missions. , with their limited surveillance coverage, may have missed.
With these data, scientists here on Earth will be able to better understand the weather and climate of Mars, complementing what was collected during previous missions and what is collected almost daily by Mars Curiosity, about 600 km away.
Keep watching The Weather Network, and
theweathernetwork.com, for more content on InSight, and follow Scott Sutherland on
Twitteras it covers the events of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory before and during the landing.
sources:
NASA |
The conversation |
NASA | With files of
The weather network
LOOK BELOW: MARSQUAKES? WHAT ARE THESE?
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