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PASADENA, California. – It all boils down to this.
After a journey in the space of nearly seven months covering more than 483 million kilometers, the NASA InSight lander is expected to land on Mars today (November 26) just before 3 pm. EST (2000 GMT). You can watch the action live here on Space.com courtesy of NASA, starting at 2pm. EST (1900 GMT).
With more than half of Mars missions not arriving on the Red Planet over the years, the InSight team is worried about today's events. [NASA’s InSight Mars Lander: Full Coverage]
"I'm completely excited and completely nervous, all at the same time," said Tom Hoffman, InSight Project Manager, at a press conference held at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) on November 25th.
"Everything we have done up to now puts us at ease and assures us that we are going to land on Mars," added Hoffman, based at JPL. "But everything has to go perfectly, and Mars could still throw us to the ball."
Artist illustration showing a simulated view of the NASA InSight lander descending to the surface of Mars under a parachute. InSight will land on the afternoon of November 26, 2018.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
Hoffman also stated that he had had trouble sleeping in recent days, but that nerves were not the only reason; his young grandchildren are visiting Thanksgiving and they have been turbulent.
InSight will be in the Martian atmosphere today at about 12,300 km / h (19,800 km / h). The atmospheric drag will dissipate about 90% of the considerable kinetic energy of the undercarriage, but that will not be enough; InSight will slow down further with the aid of a supersonic parachute and then propellers.
If everything goes as planned, the undercarriage will gently lower on the red land of a flat and boring flat equatorial plain called Elysium Planitia at about 5 mph (8 km / h), slightly more faster than walking speed. And the touchdown will take place just 6.5 minutes after InSight will have tasted for the first time in March 's air.
But the tension will not diminish just after the landing. The InSight team will not know that the solar panels of the still spacecraft have deployed until 20:35. EAST (0135 GMT) at the earliest, when NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter will be in position to relay home the confirmation of this landmark event by the Earth.
The March InSight Mars mission, worth $ 850 million, was launched on May 5 at the top of an Atlas V rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. This was a first: all of NASA's previous interplanetary missions had been launched from Space Coast in Florida.
The undercarriage is equipped with two main scientific instruments: a thermal probe and three extremely sensitive seismometers. This equipment will help mission scientists map the interior of the Martian planet with unprecedented detail over the next two terrestrial years, thus revealing vital information about the formation and evolution of rocky planets, said NASA officials.
The mission team will also use the InSight communication equipment to measure the wobbling of Mars axial inclination. This information will help to better understand the size and nature of the planet's core.
A diagram of NASA Mars' InSight lander and its scientific instruments to explore the interior of the red planet.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech – Adrian Mann / Tobias Roetsch / Future Plc
This focus on the Martian interior explains why the mission team chose such a boring landing site: cliffs, craters, ancient river deltas and other landscape features would only complicate a safe touchdown.
And do not expect an avalanche of data right after landing today: the scientific work of InSight will not begin for several months. It will take a long time for the team to prepare to deploy the seismometers suite and the thermal probe, which InSight must place on the Martian surface with its robotic arm and then calibrate the instruments.
"Once on the surface, InSight becomes an idle mission," said InSight senior investigator Bruce Banerdt, also of JPL, at the press conference the day before.
The LG was launched with two suitcase-sized spacecraft, called MarCO-A and MarCO-B, which aimed to prove that cubesats can explore interplanetary space. The two free-flying probes have been successful in this task, but they still have a job to do: they will attempt to transmit the house data to InSight when entering, descending and landing the LG. . Failure on this relay front will not be disastrous, however; Other NASA gears, such as Odyssey and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, will also perform this work.
InSight was originally scheduled for launch in March 2016, but members of the mission team detected a leak in the vacuum chamber surrounding the seismometers at the end of 2015. The leak was corrected, but not in time for face the takeoff window. (The Earth and Mars align favorably for planetary missions once every 26 months, so InSight had to wait for a moment before finally taking off.)
Visit Space.com today for full coverage of the InSight landings on Mars.
Mike Wall's book on the search for extraterrestrial life, "Over there"(Grand Central Publishing, 2018, illustrated by Karl Tate) is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. follow us @Spacedotcom or Facebook. Originally published on Space.com.
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