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And you thought that it might be difficult to find a parking space.
To reach its location on Mars, the NASA InSight lander must reach a specific location on Monday in the upper atmosphere of the red planet, survive a violent crash involving a supersonic parachute and land on a tripod.
The space agency's reaction propulsion laboratory missionaries in California are experiencing a mixture of excitement and nervousness about the process formally called Entry, Descent and Landing, or EDL, but unofficially called "Seven Minutes of Terror."
"Everything we've done so far puts us at ease and trusts us to land on Mars," said Tom Hoffman, mission project manager at JPL. "But everything has to go perfectly, and Mars could still shoot us."
Less than half of the missions ever launched on Mars have reached their destination.
NASA's InSight mission, which plans to study the deep interior of Mars, will take its turn six years after the Curiosity rover and nearly seven months after the May 5 launch of Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on an Atlas rocket V.
NASA's InSight mission, short for domestic exploration using seismic surveys, geodesy and heat transport, is designed to give the red planet its first deepest scrutiny since its inception there is 4.5 billion dollars. # 39; years.
NASA
At approximately 2:40 pm EST Monday, the probe will rotate its heat shield to face Mars and separate from a cruise stage that briefly triggered an engine one last time Sunday – which equates to a "blast". air, "Hoffman said – to line up the landing zone.
The target: Elysium Planitia, or a "heavenly plain" near the equator of Mars, Hoffman hopes, offers "a really flat area, much like a giant Walmart parking lot."
A few minutes later, the spacecraft will hit the upper atmosphere at 12,300 km / h, which will require slowing to 5 mph or risk creating a new crater on the Martian surface.
According to NASA, landing on Mars is a particularly difficult challenge because its gravitational appeal combined with a very thin atmosphere, about 1% of that of the Earth, makes the slowdown difficult.
The InSight Heat Shield will experience temperatures around 3000 degrees Fahrenheit – hot enough to melt steel – during its descent.
If all goes well, having slowed down to about 850 mph, about 11 km above the surface, the spacecraft will come out of a supersonic parachute for more stopping power and then let go its thermal shield, deploys three feet of landing and begins to scan the surface on radar. pulses.
After the withdrawal of a backshell and a brief free fall, InSight will launch a dozen retro-rockets to mitigate the landing of the lander of 789 pounds in a cloud of red dust around 14:47.
Back on Earth, the JPL engineers will look forward to the fate of the LG.
In about eight minutes, the time required for radio signals to cross the 91 million kilometers to Earth, they hope to hear a beep indicating that the undercarriage is safe.
"I'm going to be very excited once we get this first signal that we have successfully landed on Mars," Hoffman said.
Teams can get more information from a pair of tiny "stalkers" launched with the undercarriage.
Two NASA experimental spacecraft, known as CubeSats, are each the size of a briefcase and are the first of their kind to travel in faraway places. The engineers hope to be able to communicate information about the descent and health of the lander as they fly over the red planet about 3,000 miles from InSight.
Otherwise, the mission teams will have to be patient. NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will fly over his head and transmit the data about three hours after landing. Confirmation of the deployment of solar energy generators will take more than six hours.
NASA's Insight Mission is targeting a hit on Elysium Planitia, a smooth, smooth plain located just north of the equator, making it the perfect place to study deep inside the planet. Martian.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
InSIght (abbreviation for indoor exploration using seismic surveys, geodesy and heat transport) will then begin a process of several months of robotically placing several instruments on the surface of Mars, including a seismometer provided by France. .
This will begin a minimum two-year study of the planet, crust, mantle and core layers, measuring the "marsquakes" to create a three-dimensional image of the interior of Mars.
Scientists expect this knowledge to better understand the evolution of planets, including the Earth and planets orbiting other stars.
"There are a lot of things that can go wrong," said Bruce Banerdt, the mission's science officer at JPL, on Sunday. "I am really confident, personally, that we are going to land safely (Monday). It does not mean I'm not nervous. "
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