Tension rises for NASA's InSight landing on the red planet

PASADENA, California. – They do not call it "7 minutes of terror" for nothing.

The NASA InSight Mars lander is scheduled to land on the red planet tomorrow afternoon (26 November), and mission team members and agency officials are naturally nervous about the decisive moment.

Thomas Zurbuchen, associate director of the NASA Science Mission Directorate in Washington, pointed out at a press conference today (November 25) that less than half of the missions on Mars, that 39, it's about orbits or landers, have made their entrance on the red planet. ) the reaction propulsion laboratory (JPL) of the agency. [NASA’s InSight Mars Lander: Full Coverage]

"So, of course we are worried," Zurbuchen said. "We recognize that you never take Mars for granted – Mars is hard."

The difficulty for ground missions stems mainly from the fact that Mars has both a relatively strong gravitational pull force and a vaporous atmosphere, whose thickness is equal to 1% of that of the Earth, said Tom Hoffman, InSight Project Manager at JPL. Thus, spacecraft approaching are accelerated at high speeds, and then have trouble dissipating enough energy to slow down before landing, he explained at the press conference of the day.

InSight will touch the Martian atmosphere a little before 3pm. EST (2000 GMT) when traveling at approximately 12,300 km / h (19,800 km / h). Team members said, "All stiff, InSight will burn; shallower, and the vehicle will bounce off the atmosphere and sneak into the space.

The atmospheric drag will eventually slow InSight up to about 1350 km / h (840 mph), then the craft will deploy its supersonic parachute, Hoffman said. Shortly before touchdown, InSight will activate its mirrors, allowing it to settle on the red ground at a speed of only 5 mph (8 km / h). You can follow all the action live here on Space.com, with the kind permission of NASA.

This is the same entry, descent and landing (EDL) strategy used by NASA's Phoenix lander, which landed safely in the Martian Arctic in May 2008. It does not exist of celestial crane powered by a rocket, which lowered the heavier machine of the Curiosity robot on the Red Planet surface in August 2012. (The InSight EDL sequence will take about 6.5 minutes, instead of the 7 Curiosity minutes.Some NASA officials and members of the InSight team stopped, calling the upcoming trial "7 minutes of terror" as well as.)

Both Hoffman and Zurbuchen have expressed confidence in the success of InSight tomorrow, along with lead investigator Bruce Banerdt, also of JPL. All three stressed that the mission team had done everything possible to anticipate and mitigate potential problems.

"But you never know what will happen," said Hoffman. "Everything has to go perfectly, and Mars could still shoot us."

Hoffman also had a nerve problem, and he predicted that all the excitement and anxiety accumulated would break out tomorrow by receiving the first signals "I'm fine" from InSight on the Martian surface.

"I will totally release my inner child from four years," Hoffman said.

After touchdown, InSight – whose name is an abbreviation for "Indoor Exploration for Seismic Surveying, Geodesy and Heat Transport" – can get to work. The fixed lander will be the first spacecraft to probe the interior of Mars, collecting data on the structure and composition of the red planet. Such information will help to understand how rocky worlds such as Mars and Earth are formed and evolve, mission officials said.

To do this, InSight uses a series of super-sensitive seismometers and a thermal probe, which hammer at a maximum depth of 5 meters below the Martian surface. Mission team members will also use the LG's communications equipment to measure the slight jitter of Mars' axis of rotation, which in turn should reveal key information about the core. of the planet.

The InSight mission, worth $ 850 million, was launched on May 5 with two tiny cubes named MarCO-A and MarCO-B. Briefcase-sized briefcases are technological demonstrators designed to show that cubesats can actually explore interplanetary space. The MarCO duo will also aim to forward InSight's personal data tomorrow during the EDL sequence, although this task is not crucial for the success of the LG. (MarCO-A and MarCO-B will not join InSight on the surface, they will fly over Mars.)

The launch of InSight took place about two years later than planned. The probe missed its original launch window in March 2016 after detection of a leak in the vacuum chamber surrounding the seismometers suite. Mars and Earth align correctly for interplanetary missions once every 26 months. The InSight team had to wait a long time, even after fixing the leak.

Visit Space.com on Monday, November 26 for a full coverage of the InSight Landing 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.