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By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – NASA 's first robotic lander, designed to study the deep interior of a distant world, is approaching Mars on the verge of being touched on Monday after a trip to New York. six months in space.
Seen at 548 million km from the Earth, the Mars InSight spacecraft was to reach its destination on the dusty, rock-strewn surface of the red planet around 3 pm in the afternoon. EST (2000 GMT).
The mission control team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), near Los Angeles, is prepared to make a final adjustment to the flight path of InSight on Sunday in order to to bring the spacecraft closer to its point of entry over Mars.
If everything goes as planned, InSight will enter the Martian pink sky nearly 24 hours later at 19,000 kilometers at the hour. Its 77 km of descent to the surface will be slowed down by atmospheric frictions, a giant parachute and retro rockets. When he landed 6 1/2 minutes later, he will ride just 5 mph (8 km / h).
The stationary probe, launched in California in May, will then pause for 16 minutes to allow dust to settle literally around the landing site before its disc-shaped solar panels unfold to provide energy. .
JPL engineers hope to obtain real-time electronic confirmation of the safe arrival of the spacecraft by miniature satellites launched with InSight and flying over Mars.
The JPL controllers are also waiting to receive a photo of the probe's environment in the smooth, Martian plain near the planet's equator, called Elysium Planitia.
The site is about 600 km from the 2012 Curiosity landing site, the last spacecraft the size of a car, the last spacecraft sent to the red planet by NASA.
The smallest, 360 kg (880 lbs) InSight – its name is an abbreviation for indoor exploration using seismic surveys, geodesy and heat transport – marks the 21st Martian exploration launched by the United States , including Mariner flyby missions in the 1960s. Nearly two dozen other missions on Mars were sent by other countries.
How rocky planets formed
InSight is the first site dedicated to discovering deep secrets under the Martian surface. The lander will spend 24 months – about a Martian year – using seismic monitoring and underground drilling to collect clues about the formation of Mars and, by extension, about the origins of the Earth and other planets rocky internal solar system more than 4 billion years ago.
"What this helps us understand, is how we got there," said Bruce Banerdt, JPL's principal investigator of InSight, at a pre-briefing. landing with reporters last week.
While tectonic Earth and other forces have erased most of the early evidence, much of Mars – about a third of its size – would have remained largely static over the centuries, creating a machine geological time for scientists.
The main instrument of InSight is an extremely sensitive seismometer of French manufacture, designed to detect the smallest vibrations caused by the "marsquakes" and the meteor impacts.
Scientists expect to see a dozen to 100 marsquakes during the mission, producing data to infer the size, density and composition of the planet.
The Viking probes of the mid-1970s were equipped with seismometers, but they were bolted to the top of the landing gear, a design that proved largely ineffective.
InSight is also equipped with a German-made drill that burrows up to 5 meters underground by pulling a rope-shaped heat probe to measure heat.
Meanwhile, a radio transmitter will send signals to the Earth and follow the subtle rotational movement of Mars to reveal the size of the planet's nucleus and eventually determine whether it remains melted.
The InSight mission and the upcoming mobile mission, as well as others at the planning stage, are considered precursors to Mars' potential human exploration, NASA officials said.
(By Steve Gorman, edited by Cynthia Osterman and David Gregorio)
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