[Status check to proceed with terminal count.]
There is a moment at the start of every
mission when everything comes together. A moment when years of preparation and
planning are put to the test. [Clear to proceed.] There are no second chances. [You have permission to launch.]
Success or failure is just a heartbeat
away.
A spacecraft and it's rocket on the pad fully fueled and ready to launch. [Status check. Go Atlas. Go Centaur.]
In that moment a controlled explosion
released with such an intense power
it can propel a spacecraft off the
earth and into space for the benefit of all.
We call this moment T-Zero, this is its
story.
NASA is about to do something we've
never done before. Nestled along the
mountains on California's Central Coast
is a little talked about Space Launch
Center known as Vandenberg Air Force
Base. From here history is about to be made.
This is the first time we've had an
interplanetary launch from Vandenberg
Air Force Base in California. The cool
thing about this launch is that we've
got such a capable rocket the Atlas 5, we
don't have to launch from Florida.
InSight is gonna be the first time we've
had a spacecraft leave Earth's orbit
launching from California. We've actually
done studies for it even up two decades
ago but it just comes down to whether or
not the mission I had extra propellant
left over and whether there was an
operational reason to switch from an
East Coast launch to West Coast. This is
just the first time all of it came together.
What we're gonna do is we're
gonna unload the spacecraft really
really carefully and then we're going to
drive it a couple of miles to the
Astrotech facility where they have a
clean room all set up for us. We've got
about two months here. All we got to do
is clean it up test it out put the fuel
in the tanks and bolt it on the rocket
and off we go to Mars. InSight is NASA's
next groundbreaking mission, literally
designed to break ground on Mars using
probes and seismometers insight will
listen for Mars quakes and measure how
much heat the planets interior gives off.
If we're going to truly understand how
rocky planets like Mars and Earth were
created we need to look inside.
It's unlike other missions that we've done in
Mars we have a number of orbiters a
number of Landers that we've
successfully explored this amazing
planet but this this actually is the
first mission where we're really looking
on the inside the inner space of Mars.
Sending a science mission to the red
planet is never easy. Landing a probe on
the surface is even harder. To accomplish
this, InSight will have to shed its many
components
in a matter of minutes bit by bit like
peeling an orange until only the lander
is left so the crew stage itself is the
critical component that that actually
gets us to Mars there's an aeroshell
that absorbs the heat as we re-enter the
atmosphere that aeroshell enables us to
go through the the atmosphere of Mars
successfully without getting the inside
the lander itself too hot we deploy a
parachute that parachute does two things
it really ensures the stability of the
aeroshell as it started to get closer to
the surface it also slows down the
spacecraft further until finally we drop
out of the combination backshell and
parachute and then we do a propulsive
descent down to the surface. We know
water exists on Mars and where there's
water there could be signs of life but
we must ensure any organisms we discover
weren't simply stowaways from Earth.
This is where the planetary protection team
comes into play. Planetary protection is
what we do to responsibly explore other
planets and moons in
our solar system in order to do that we
need to make sure that we send a clean
spacecraft there. We would hate to get to
another planet or moon and think we
discovered life but it was actually
something that we brought with us. So we
collect our samples on InSight, any part
of inside that's going to land on the
surface of Mars, we bring it back to our
lab and we process it using a NASA
procedure. If we run into a situation
where you take a sample and it comes
back as having higher number of bacteria
than what we want then we make sure that
the engineers go back and clean those
surfaces for the whole idea that we
don't want to cloud our ability to
potentially find life on another planet
or moon.
Lockheed Martin's space of Denver
Colorado built InSight with an extremely
efficient design streamlining what needs
to be done at the launch site. They ship
the spacecraft to Vandenberg with no
assembly required. Simply check it out,
fuel it, test it, encapsulate it and it's
ready for launch. The processing for our
spacecraft has been very smooth a lot of
the processing had to do with fueling
the spacecraft removing some removed
before flight items everything else was
pretty much already installed on the
spacecraft in Denver Colorado before it
was shipped here and that's to call a
ship and shoot, which means there's not
too much to do except for to fuel the
vehicle and do some last-minute power on
checkouts of the onboard computers and
subsystems. These preparations are
crucial everything must be working
perfectly before InSight leaves earth. This effort
is designed to ensure a safe arrival and
landing following the six-month trip
from Earth to Mars. In the meantime,
United Launch Alliance or ULA is busy
at their Launchpad, slick-three,
assembling the world's most successful
rocket the Atlas 5. Well I mean we're
building a rocket what's not
exciting about that. I'm really excited
to be able to launch the first planetary
mission from the west coast
first ula stacks their Atlas 5 booster
onto the launch platform. Atlas 5 is
powered by the mighty rd-180 rocket
engine. The rd-180 is a powerhouse
burning highly refined kerosene known as
RP 1 and liquid oxygen for thrust. For
this mission the rd-180 has more than
enough power to get insight off of Earth
and heading towards Mars. When the
Boosters fuel is spent the Centaur's
second stage kicks in and finishes the
job. Centaur won't actually hit Mars it
will fly just past it. Final course
corrections will be done by InSight
itself to enter the Martian atmosphere
and land on the surface. Once fueling and
testing is complete the team from United
Launch Alliance will encapsulate InSight
inside its payload fairing, the shell
that keeps InSight clean and safe
during its dangerous ascent to Earth's
atmosphere. We're at the face of the
mission where we're encapsulating with
the launch vehicle and the ula team with
their fairings now come in and they take
the two halves of the fairings and they
make a clamshell
around the spacecraft to help protect it
for the environments that we see during
launch and we do that because as we
leave the Earth's atmosphere the air and
the molecules in the atmosphere would
tear up our spacecraft otherwise the
fairing is there to protect us.
With InSight encapsulated in its fairing
it's time to move the payload out to
slick-three but this California
coastline comes with its own set of
challenges
the surrounding marine layer can swallow
up a launch pad
reducing visibility to under a couple
hundred feet. So right now it's on the
transport vehicle and it's ready to roll
and we'll be rolling out around to a
2:00 a.m. at that point we'll have a
convoy that drives very slowly from the
payload processing facility out to the
slick-three Atlas 5 facility, and once it
arrives we'll hoist the encapsulated
spacecraft up to the top of the mobile
service tower and place it on the launch
vehicle. This morning when it was sitting
on the truck and they put the crane on
it they started lifted up that's the
last time this the spacecraft's ever
going to feel the ground of Earth.
I'm just just kind of jumping out of my
skin this is so exciting we're getting
so close to launch and it's been a long
long road. This has been a challenging
program I mean we've had a lot of
technical issues to overcome so we
actually had to stand down back in 2015
but since then we've gotten it all
together and things been going so
smoothly the last year we really feel
really confident about this launch. We
got it on top of the rocket
we're going to blast it off in just a
few days and when it gets to Mars and
lands finally we'll have solid ground
under its feet again and get to work on
probing the depths of Mars. But InSight
won't be traveling alone hitching a ride
to the Red Planet are a pair of CubeSats, twin satellites called Marco A and
Marco B.
So Marco is a dual payload riding as a
secondary mission on its way to Mars. So
Marco is a pair of CubeSats and CubeSats
are really small spacecraft they're
essentially the size of a large cereal
box about this big. It's going to be
relaying telemetry from the entry
descent and landing of InSight back to
earth in near real time. After InSight is
deployed on orbit and is heading to Mars
Centaur, which is behind me, injects Marco A
into orbit and it will slowly rotate
itself so that Marco B ejects 180
degrees on the other side of the vehicle.
But Marco is a technology demonstration
mission it's actually one of the
smallest spacecraft we've ever launched
interplanetary space it's the first
interplanetary CubeSat so in of itself
it has all of these technology that
we've never tested in deep space before.
So if Marco works this time one of the
cool things that we could do is actually
replicate that system and fly it with
other missions in the future and whether
you go into Mars or Venus or it may be
even further away to an asteroid and you
could think of it as bring your own
telecom relay. So everything went well
today with the lift of the spacecraft
and mate onto the rocket it started off
very foggy and windy
and right now it's a beautiful day this
typical California weather and now we're
ready to go to Mars.
But just as Twilight falls across the
base the fog returns cloaking the coast
with a bone-chilling mist that will last
until daybreak. As we get closer to T-Zero
liftoff time a number of activities have
to happen. There's a mobile service tower
around the Atlas five rocket and the
InSight spacecraft is on top of the
rocket enclosed in the payload fairing
so we're gonna back that mobile service
tower away from the rocket to leave it
exposed just beside the umbilical tower.
[Engineer proceed with roll to park position. Roger MST shall be
closed in park position. Roger.]
The final launchpad preparation is
underway once the mobile service tower
is rolled back InSight and Atlas 5 are
just hours away from T-Zero. Basking in the
searchlights of the West Coast facility
they are presented with the glamour of a
Hollywood premier fitting treatment for
such an historical mission
So there's a lot of excitement within
the NASA launch team about the InSight
mission first time we're going to launch
from the California coast going to Mars
and what is really exciting to the team
is this is the culmination of a lot of
work. The teams have been working on this
mission for over five years and today is
the day that they will see all of their
hard work rewarded.
[Status check to proceed with terminal
count Atlas systems propulsion go
hydraulics go pneumatics go 
water go Centaur systems propulsion go
pneumatics go LH-2 go facility go
reigns coordinator clear to proceed
launch director. LC you have permission
to launch go Atlas go Center go InSight.
Proceeding with the count. We're at 
t-minus eight seven six five four three
two, one, zero.
And liftoff of the Atlas-5 launching the first interplanetary mission on the west coast and NASA's
InSight the first outer space robotic
explorer to study the interior of Mars.
Seconds after liftoff the rocket punches
through the marine layer lighting the
night sky for miles visible all the way
down to Los Angeles. An infrared camera
showing the long tail of the exhaust
plume captures some of the ascent as
well as an onboard ascent camera. And
we're nearing booster engine cutoff.
We're back to 4.6 G's in preparation blue space cooldown has completed.
Shutdown looks good. Stage
separation. We have box and fuel prestart
between two purge firing, the RCS is
underway. We have ignition and full
thrust
and we have indication of payload
fairing jettison it looks like a good sep.
And the payload fairing that was
encapsulating the InSight spacecraft has
been jettisoned. The RL10C engine the
second stage of the Centaur continues to
burn. An hour and 28 minutes into the
mission the InSight spacecraft and the
Marco twins are deployed from the Centaur
upper stage beginning the long
voyage to Mars where InSight will go to
work shedding light on secrets hidden in
the depths of the Red Planet.
T-minus three - engine starts - two, one
