NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
presents the von Karman lecture a series
of talks by scientists and engineers who
are exploring our planet our solar
system and all that lies beyond
good evening ladies and gentlemen how's
everyone tonight thank you very much as
always thank you very much for coming
out to join us tonight the insight
mission to Mars scheduled to launch in
may 2018 will be the first NASA mission
to observe the deep interior of Mars and
help us learn about the history and
evolution of the planet the instruments
in sight will bring our conceptually
simple yet also sensitive delicate and
complex the spacecraft itself uses
proven hardware from previous Mars
service missions but also features new
activities crucial to the success of
insight science our guest this evening
will help us dig deep into the workings
of the next Mars adventure tonight's
guest exalts in a lifelong love of space
rocks science and engineering and is
found in his role as a planetary
geologist and instrument engineer at JPL
a perfect marriage of these interests he
received bachelor's degrees from MIT in
both material science and engineering
and Earth atmospheric and Planetary
Sciences he then earned his doctorate at
Cal Tech's geological and Planetary
Sciences Department where he focused on
investigations of the growth evolution
and loss of subsurface ice on Mars he
has participated in a number of field
campaigns to study life in extreme
environments and to test prototype Mars
instruments from the ice caps of
Greenland to the heights of Earth's
stratosphere places surprisingly similar
to Mars when it came to JPL in 2008 he
served on the instrument team for the
mecca instrument on the Phoenix Mars
Lander and since 2010 he has been a part
of the science team for the insight
mission where he is also the JPL
instrument systems engineer for the
Landers german-built heat flow
instrument ladies and gentlemen please
help me welcome tonight's guest dr. Troy
Hudson
hello and thank you for coming with me
on this journey this evening over the
past two decades eleven missions have
visited Mars but our newest mission
insight will look at the red planet in a
totally new way from orbiters to Landers
to Rovers we've explored our neighbors
atmosphere and surface with
ever-increasing levels of detail and
sophistication but and to be a bit
cliche these missions have only just
scratched the surface
there are many deep questions we have
about Mars as a planet how did it form
how has it changed over time and what is
it like today Mars is one of a family of
planets rocky planets they're quite
distinct from a gas giant like Jupiter
and different still from the trillions
of comets and asteroids that still
inhabit our solar system they're a
family but there are very diverse family
and one of the big questions we have is
why did they in fact form from the same
stuff and once they formed how have they
changed what brought them to where they
are are there laws that govern the
formation of a rocky planet maybe there
are tendencies that they follow but can
deviate from and maybe coincidence
played a role in giving us Mercury Venus
Earth Mars and the moon go back in time
four and a half billion years ago when
the solar system was forming and planets
were growing as gravity brought together
matter into clumps that grew over time
these clumps began to heat up and when
they got hot enough they began to melt
heavy things like iron fell to the
center whereas lighter minerals and
rose to the surface this process this
differentiation is thought to be common
to all such bodies a birthright of
terrestrial planets and this process
gave rise to familiar layers core mantle
and crust and indeed all of these
objects share these features but in very
different ways
so with insight we will be going to Mars
to look beneath the surface and see what
it's like inside consider though for a
moment that crust the Earth's crust
everything you've ever seen with your
own eyes every person every living thing
every mountain canyon and ocean all
exist on the crust of the earth and that
layer is thin sized for size Earth's
crust is thinner than the skin of an
apple so much of a planet is unseen and
so with insight we will look with tools
other than our eyes to find out what is
Mars like as a planet we know the earth
and the moon pretty well a hundred years
of seismology and geology have taught us
a lot about what earth looks like inside
we know it's a very warm place there's a
liquid outer core churning and moving
and this moving magnetic fluid iron
fluid creates Earth's magnetic field
earth is a very active place we have
volcanoes we have the bane of Southern
California of earthquakes we have plate
tectonics a process which has recycled
and evolved Earth's mantle and crust
since it was formed the moon we know
about because of Apollo the Apollo
astronauts went there
brought back rocks and they left
seismometers on the moon these tools can
to operate long after the astronauts had
gone bringing back over a decade worth
of data of moon quakes we've learned
that the moon
despite its early violent and active
history origins is now rather cold solid
throughout there's no intrinsic magnetic
field most of its activity was in the
past because of its size it didn't
experience all of the processes that
Earth did it didn't get us hot there
weren't as high pressures and so a lot
of the early formation processes that
happened on earth didn't happen for the
moon Mars scientifically is an ideal
in-between a Goldilocks planet because
it's big enough to have experienced
those pressures and temperatures and a
very active history similar to Earth's
but it's small small enough that it lost
a lot of that early heat whatever dynamo
it had to create a magnetic field early
in its life is now gone it stopped
Mars has frozen into an early state
possibly a state like Earth when it was
young before Earth erased that evidence
with tectonics and convection so by
studying Mars we get a glimpse into what
Earth may have once been like this chart
shows you our current state of knowledge
four major layers in the earth and the
Moon and Mars but the key point here is
to look at the numbers the numbers for
Earth and the moon are just numbers the
ones for Mars have question marks our
state of knowledge of Mars is informed
by some information from satellites some
application of physics and geology and
our understanding of how those play
together but there are still big
uncertainties so we want to look into
Mars in the language of the insight
mission we call these vital signs we
want to look at Mars as structure and we
will do that with marsquakes much like a
doctor can use
ultrasound to look inside your body we
will look inside Mars with these
planetary scale vibrations we also want
to take Mars as temperature find out
what is still in the planet that churns
and creates geologic activity and what
was it like in the past and Mars has
reflexes it spins in space but it
wobbles as it does so and this wobble
can tell us about the interior I've
hinted at the goals of this insight
mission but here they are in concrete
some of the things we want to know we
want to know the core how big is it what
is it made of and what state is it in is
it solid liquid or somewhere in between
what is the structure of the crust and
the mantle and how warm is the interior
how much energy is there in that
planetary heat engine that drives
geology these are great questions but
they're not easy questions to answer
even if you had a ruler long enough and
you were on Mars you couldn't measure
the thickness of the mantle it's not
accessible and so we have to look to
answer these questions in indirect ways
we do this with seismology how powerful
are seismic events on the planet how
often do they happen and where on the
planet do they happen then how does
Mars's surface and body react to
external influences like a meteorite
impact or the movement of its moon
Phobos again how does it spin and wobble
in space and how does its temperature in
the ground change with depth these are
our measurements to help us answer our
goals and there's not a one-to-one
correspondence some of the questions and
some of the goals work together we can
take multiple types of measurements to
answer a single question giving more
robustness to that investigation and
deepening our understanding so to make
these measurements insight has
three primary instruments and I'll be
talking in particular about those size
rise and HP cubed but before I get into
them I want you to have a look at the
lander as it will look when it's on the
surface and see that it's not just these
three instruments there's a whole lot of
other things that make up insights
payload we have a robotic arm we have
two cameras and we have a suite of
environmental sensors these devices help
the primary instruments do their job and
provide context for the data they take
first I'm going to look a little bit of
size and size is an instrument that
anyone who lives with earthquakes knows
about it's a seismometer there you see
it deployed from the surface of the
lander to the surface of Mars
incise is not just one seismometer it's
actually six there's three of a type
called very broad baseline seismometers
or VB B's there's the short period
seismometers or SP and these are all
packaged together into a dense sphere
about the size of a volleyball you can
see there on the left some of the
engineers Atkin s the French Space
Agency which is an international partner
with insight who led a consortium of
international partners to produce this
instrument this incredibly sensitive
instrument size is as sensitive as the
best seismometers on earth so sensitive
that it can measure displacements in the
ground smaller than a hydrogen atom it's
also robust it can survive the rigors of
launch interplanetary space flight and
the temperature fluctuations on the
surface of Mars it can survive these
things but it's so sensitive that we
still have to protect it from noise from
signals that would swamp out the weaker
quakes
and shakes and motion
of Mars's surface some other components
of size like the electronics box and the
tether help it do its job Connect that
seismometer back to the lander but I
really want you to draw your attention
to that figure at the top where the
seismometer that golden volleyball is
inside this copper hexagon of insulation
that protects the seismometer from some
of the thermal changes you would see on
Mars that's what you will see picked up
off the lander and placed on the ground
first after we arrived but it's not
enough we need more protection both from
the Sun and also from wind Mars's
atmosphere is quite thin but it's still
enough to shake and jitter that
seismometer to a point where we could
get good data so we have something
called the wind and thermal shield that
white dome on the upper right this is
picked up by the arm and placed on top
of the seismometer and that golden skirt
you see around the bottom that's
actually chainmail just like you would
find on a medieval suit of armor we have
that so that it can conform to the
irregular ground surface of Mars and
essentially prevent drafts from getting
underneath and disturbing sighs once
you've got rid of all those noise what
are we looking for we're looking for
marsquakes how do we know there are
marsquakes we've seen false just like
the san andreas we see places on Mars
where the ground has moved relative to
itself we've mapped these that figure on
the lower left has some red and green
lines showing where there are faults on
Mars and by combining these observations
with our knowledge of geophysics and how
it operates on earth we predict what
kind of seismicity what frequency of
event we might see on Mars in that chart
there's a red line that's quiet places
on earth not bring a fire like we have
here in Southern California but quiet
places the magenta line the pink line
there that's the moon Mars
Goldilocks again is somewhere in between
at the top you see some numbers the
familiar Richter magnitude scale and
what this plot says is we predict
somewhere between ten and a hundred
Richter 5 earthquake marsquakes excuse
me every year for a magnitude six it
would be somewhere like 1 to 10 that's
this prediction Mars could surprise us
it could be much more active or it could
be much less active either way it's an
interesting scientific result but we
have other things that we will be
looking at with size which are more
definite and still tell us about the
planet one of these is the tide of
Phobos Phobos is the larger of Mars's
two moons but it's small it's a lumpy
potato 27 kilometers in its biggest
dimension that's the distance from
Pasadena to Santa Monica it's tiny but
it's so much closer to Mars then the
moon is to earth then as it passes
overhead its gravity causes the ground
on Mars to rise and fall this is not
something you'd ever feel not something
you'd ever see but size can and by
looking at this regular motion of the
ground as Phobos passes overhead and we
do happen to land on the equator so it
passes right overhead we learn about
Mars as interior there's another source
of excitation which again is Mars's
atmosphere it's thin but it has regions
of high and low pressure and is these
pass over the surface they also cause it
to flex up and down this excites modes
like a ringing Bell and makes Mars hum a
seismic hum which earth also experiences
but here's an instance we're studying
another planet teaches us about Earth
Mars has a seismic hum because of its
atmosphere so does earth but earth also
has oceans and the waves crashing into
the shores and the swells from sea
storms and the tides these create an
ocean
to come but on earth they're mixed up
together it's hard to separate the two
effects so by studying Mars we can see
what's the effect of an ocean 'less
planet and then we can learn more about
how Earth's hum works another source the
last source and probably the most
dramatic is the impact of meteorites
we have orbiting spacecraft at Mars that
are taking pictures of the surface and
every now and then we'll see oh look a
new dark spot that wasn't there in the
previous images it's new and the impact
of meteorites on Mars is happening today
actually somewhat more frequently than
on earth
the thinner atmosphere lets a lot of
those come in and make it all the way to
the surface a meteorite impact has a
particular character it's a bit
different from intrinsic internal Mars
quake size has those six seismometers
that can detect not only the direction
from which a seismic signal is coming
but the approximate distance with that
information we can send the orbiting
spacecraft to go look in that area look
for the new dark spot once we find that
we have a location an exact time from
the size of the crater we know the
energy and a perfect correspondence
between observation and our ground truth
from the seismometer this is exactly the
sort of information that we would use to
make and change our models of what Mars
is like inside here's an animation
looking inside Mars for a meteorite
impact but it could be for any seismic
source this the event happens and waves
spread out through the planet pressure
waves compression shear waves shearing
they interact with the surface they
reflect across boundaries like ripples
in a pond or light in a prism and we can
study the character of these waves where
they arrive at the seismometer and
change our models that's the goal here
is to use physics use geology and make
our model of Mars exactly match our data
that's the real goal because the models
can change the data that's real that's
physical that is the world so that's our
seismometer the next instrument that was
mentioned is rise and rises the thing
that we'll be looking at Mars's wobble
as it spins in space it doesn't spin
perfectly evenly it does wiggle and
wobble around and it turns out this
wobble carries information about the
interior of Mars its core in particular
rise is part of insights
telecommunication system it has two
antennas that send a tone a single
frequency back to earth and by listening
to this tone and the small changes that
happen as Mars rotates we can very
precisely measure the distance between
the receiving station on earth and the
insight transmitter not just our
extremely precisely within 10
centimeters for something that's
millions of kilometers away
that's incredible accuracy not only will
rise allow us to make this measurement
once we will make it continuously for
the entire time we're on Mars will be
making rise measurements and extending
that baseline improving our knowledge of
Mars's deep structure the last
instrument I'll speak of is H P cubed
the heat flow and physical properties
package is the instrument I spent most
of my time working on with insight and
so I'll delve a little bit more deeply
into the science and technical aspects
of this literally groundbreaking
instrument you see the support structure
of HB cube deployed on the surface and
what you see there is the heat flow
probe of H cube has already started its
journey penetrating into the ground
looking a bit closer at that
structure there's a grapple hook at the
top which we'll use for the deployment
and the engineering tether at left which
connects it back to the lander within
that structure we have a few sensors and
then there's a tether which connects to
the mole and that mole has a mechanism
for hammering it has tilt sensors and it
has some instruments for measuring
thermal conductivity but why why dig why
a mole why did we need something that
goes even deeper into Mars than we have
with the other instruments the purpose
of each pqube is to measure heat flow
and heat flow tells us about both the
thermal and chemical history of the
planet remember when the planet formed
it brought in matter under gravity and
that matter included radioactive
elements these unstable atoms as they
decay release energy and this energy
becomes trapped in the planet it's one
of the major sources of the primordial
heat we understand the physics of
radioactivity quite well and so we can
look at how Mars is today and figure out
the inventory of radioactive elements in
the past are they what we expect for
where Mars formed relative to the earth
and the Sun or is there something
different some reason why we need to
refine those models we want to
understand the thermal history and how
those radioactive elements have changed
Mars's heat engine and what's it like
right now how much energy is there to
drive present-day
geologic activity to measure this heat
flow we need two numbers we need thermal
conductivity which is the property of
the ground and we need to measure the
thermal gradient that's how the
temperature changes as you go deeper
this is why we need the mole we need to
get down into the ground to avoid things
like surface disturbances just like
sighs we don't want to see the
temperature differences at the surface
we need to get below that
and so the mole will take us deeper than
we've ever gone human or robotic on any
other body the Apollo astronauts in
their space suits with big hand tools
got down to a little less than two and a
half meters we're targeting five that's
16 feet that's taller than this building
and once we're there we want to measure
those temperature differences for that
thermal gradient to within a hundredth
of a degree so there's some really key
engineering challenges that we needed to
solve and the star of HP cubes
engineering feet is the mole the mole
it's a small device it's about the
diameter of a quarter
it's about as long as my forearm and it
doesn't weigh that much maybe about a
kilogram and a half main components are
a hammer and some Springs a motor that
winds up that hammer against the springs
and then what you see in this movie at
the left is that instant of hammer
release when the cam is wound up the
hammer strikes and drives them all into
the ground there's a few secondary
strikes and settling but this instant of
hammering is what makes them all move
forward this is slowed down it takes
about a tenth of a second and each
hammer stroke as that cam goes around is
about every three to four seconds so
imagine you're on Mars
it's a very stately pace but millimeter
by millimeter we penetrate Mars's
surface to do our science some
statistics and other information about
the mole we've got our three seconds per
hammer stroke and then we don't
penetrate all at once we have cycles
where we penetrate and then we pause the
penetration process creates a lot of
heat we let that heat dissipate and then
we heat the mole itself built into the
structure of the mole our heaters and by
heating the mole up and letting that
heat diffuse away into the ground we
learn the thermal conductivity we
determine that thermal property of the
soil which is key to that heat flow
measurement it takes about 24 hours to
make that thermal measurement and then
we hammer again ten times we hope to do
this stair stepping our way down to five
meters on Mars the mole might encounter
a rock
we're going to a place on Mars which is
relatively rock free but it's still
possible we've seen in some laboratory
experiments that the mole can push small
rocks out of its way underground larger
rocks the mole gets deflected a little
bit in the rock gets deflected a little
bit still larger rocks the mole itself
can deflect we use the tilt sensor in
the back of the mole combined with a
measurement of the tether that gets
pulled out to reconstruct its path in
the ground we do this because we need to
precisely know where those conductivity
measurements are made and where the
temperature sensors that the mole pulls
behind it and up this is a time-lapse
video and in the very quick moment
you'll see the mole at the bottom it's
at the top of a slow column and it's
gonna disappear there it is
it started to dig this is a column five
meters tall in Germany where we are
testing the operation of the mole
that plot at the right with the green
line that's the progress from this test
we're continuously we reached five
meters in five and a half hours and this
is in one of the more difficult
materials that we use to simulate Mars a
surface so the moles quite a capable
thing as it goes down you might see
these little white specks going down on
the tether those are temperature sensors
14 of them embedded in the tether the
tether itself is a scientific instrument
so the mole brings us down into the
ground measuring that key thermal
property conductivity once it's down
once we've reached our final depth which
we hope to be five meters but we can do
our science if we only make it a little
bit shallower the mole has done its job
at that point it's done the remainder of
the time on Mars we monitor we monitor
temperatures with that science tether
one thing you might see is in the tether
you have those little markings on the
left and the right those little dots
that's code that's what that tether
length monitor uses to measure the
amount of tether that's been pulled by
the mole into the ground so we can
reconstruct the path of the mole but
also so we can reconstruct exactly
within a centimeter where those
temperature sensors end up with depth
and that's important because we need to
determine that number that thermal
gradient at the bottom of that graph
there that line that's what we're after
closer to the surface one or two meters
down there's still a lot of fluctuation
annual seasonal changes propagate into
the ground and they're noise for us and
so with the mole we dig
but first after insight has arrived on
Mars after we've gone through the seven
minutes of Terror and landed on the
surface and the lander is healthy and
doing fine the instruments still aren't
where they need to be they have one last
journey seismometer can't do its job on
the lander it's too noisy of an
environment especially with those big
solar panels flapping in the wind
and HP cubed capable as the mole is you
do not want to dig through the body of
the spacecraft so we have the robotic
arm and what you'll see in this next
video is a bit spent the seismometer
then the wind and thermal shield and
finally HP cubed now this is sped up so
the process of picking up one of these
items and putting it back on the ground
takes about 10 minutes but this video or
this animation has also been severely
edited there's a whole lot of
back-and-forth between Mars and Earth
making sure we grappled the object
correctly making sure we placed it
correctly and all of the other checkouts
and cross-checks we do to make sure we
get it right the first time here the arm
is picking up the wind and thermal
shield and that skirt and its legs just
drop right down and it comes over and
gets placed on top of a seismometer the
arm doesn't have a huge reach there's a
small work space in front of the lander
there that it can go to and we have
preferred places where we'd like to put
these instruments but there could be a
rock there could be several rocks we
have to take pictures of the area and
then decide exactly where we want to put
the instruments it seems like simple
this whole process seems like a simple
thing but it's complicated and this is
the first time we've done it we've never
deployed an instrument from a spacecraft
onto the surface of another body before
we've had instruments on the end of the
arm but we've never done something like
this here you see HP Cube getting placed
on the ground and the whole process from
landing to this point here where
pqube is on the ground and the mole can
start digging will take about 45 days in
the best of cases and so insight is a
mission to Mars we will be studying Mars
we will be learning about its interior
but by extension and by comparison we
are learning about the other rocky
planets in our solar system the laws
that govern their formation the
tendencies they follow and possibly what
coincidental chance events led to them
being the way they are today and we have
discovered around other stars other
rocky planets other members of that
family and we will through this mission
gain insight into that formation process
which could happen all over the universe
I'll spend a few moments now talking a
bit about where insight is at the
present and what you can expect to see
in the coming months the spacecraft has
been built it has been packaged up and
it has been sent to Vandenberg Air Force
Base here in California this will be the
first time a mission an interplanetary
mission has launched from Vandenberg our
scheduled launch period is in May and
June and our first target launch date is
May 5th once we launch we'll cruise to
Mars for about six months
landing on November 26 2008 een this is
that seven minutes of Terror where we
come through the atmosphere
first on a heat shield then a parachute
then a brief moment of freefall and
retro rockets that bring us gently down
to the surface very much like the
Phoenix Mars Lander arrived in the polar
regions of Mars in 2008 insights might
look familiar because it is based on the
Phoenix spacecraft once we've arrived
we'll do our checkout and that whole
deployment process will calibrate the
instruments each b cube will penetrate
and then the whole system goes into its
listening mode we listen
to Mars for its quakes you listen to its
temperature we observe its wobble the
primary mission for insight is one Mars
year that's two earth years and if our
history with engineering such spacecraft
is any indication for instance the
opportunity Rover was designed to
operate ninety days on Mars and it just
celebrated its 5000 day operating on
Mars insight could be going for a decade
or more we'll be landing at a place on
Mars called Elysium
Elysium cliche it's quite close to where
curiosity is right now exploring Gale
Crater we chose this location because
it's safe for the lander and it can let
the instruments do their jobs when we
get those first pictures back they're
probably going to be the most boring
pictures you've ever seen from the
surface of Mars because it's smooth and
flat and boring and that's exactly what
we want
SycE is studying the planet it could do
its job from anywhere
HP cubed also studying the planet but it
once broken up regolith broken up ground
to dig into we can't dig through rock
and so with those constraints and the
various engineering constraints of the
lander we've chosen this location that
will be our home for a long time once
inside arrives in sight will not be
alone on its journey to Mars it will be
followed by two cube sets called Marco
cube SATs they're small literally this
big and it's the first time one of these
micro satellites has gone on an
interplanetary mission Marco will act as
mirrors radio mirrors receivers and
transmitters relays for the insight
Lander as it comes through the
atmosphere to land on the surface we
have orbiters around Mars right now that
can relay signals but they can't do it
simultaneously they can't listen to the
lander and send the information back to
the earth insight will be on autopilot
as it goes through the atmosphere to
land but Marco will be able
to relay all the information it gives us
in real time well it's close to
real-time as you can get when you're
many light minutes away and now some of
the things we've been doing to engage
the public and everyone who is part of
this mission there's a microchip on
insite - and a point four million names
on it
many of you in this room may be going to
Mars this way many of you watching may
also be going and we thank you for that
and we hope you enjoy the ride here in
California we'll be doing a roadshow
we'll be taking some exhibits and some
scientists and engineers to various
locations in the months leading up to
the launch so if you're in these areas
up in Shasta San Francisco Sacramento
and the towns along the coast near
Vandenberg there'll be a number of
events that you can go to and get some
more hands-on feel for insight and the
exciting engineering and science of this
mission and finally please follow us on
our journey to Mars you can watch the
launch online
I think there's now a Google Earth
widget where you can see the flight path
of the launch vehicle you see if you can
see it from where you live and there's
an app an app called be a Martian this
will be returning data from insight the
first data once the instruments all
calibrated will come back in March of
2019 you get a notification on your
phone there's been a Mars quake here are
the current conditions at the insight
Lander and more so you can look on the
NASA website you can find us on Facebook
and you can follow us on Twitter and
continue to be a part as you have been
with me this evening on our next journey
to the planet Mars thank you
I would be thrilled to take your
questions if you would there is a
microphone in the center of the aisle if
you'd like to come up to that so that
those on the broadcast can hear your
question as well yeah I have two
questions I hope they're brief the first
is does the grapple have a job after its
deployed the two instruments the grapple
itself no we don't have anything for it
to do but the robotic arm itself has a
scoop on the end of it and we may do
some geologic investigations of the
surface soil with the arm after its
deployed the instruments I assume when
the wall is digging that the seismometer
can hear it does it make enough signal
to hear reflections from the internal
parts of March oh that's a fantastic
question and it's particularly relevant
because just this Monday we went out to
the field to do some preliminary
geophysical surveying of a site that we
will use to test mole seismometer
interactions they're not designed for
this the signals that we get from the
seismometers are quite long period and
the impact of the mole is too fast for
this seismometer to see in full detail
so we have developed some techniques
where we can take advantage of this
known seismic source by taking various
spectra every time the mole hammers and
stacking them up we can get a picture of
what the NIR subsurface is like we can't
learn about the deep interior but we
might learn how deep is that soil we're
digging in and where is that first
reflector that first piece of bedrock
and that's a nice piece of information
for the seismometer to have so we're
working to really understand that
process so when we get to Mars yes we
can use H P cubed as a known source for
size thanks for the talk have you an
estimate of what it was is the chance of
there being like a big rock underneath
that you can't drill through we have
width so we've looked at the surface and
using information from other geologic
sites on
Mars that we visited with Landers and
also looking at evidence from craters in
the nearby region we can estimate the
distance to the bedrock and also the
rock abundance and we think for very
conservative assumptions the chance of
us encountering a ten-centimeter Rock is
on the order of 73 percent in the five
meter depth now we encounter a 10
centimeter rock that isn't to say
that'll stop the mole because depending
on the shape of the rock and how its
oriented we may pass by it entirely so
and if you take less conservative
assumptions our chances of success go up
to the high 90s all right
great talk I have three questions one is
how long how long does the mole have to
stop pinging before it settles down and
you can take temperature measurements
yes so in the digging process oh you
mean the temp measurements of the tether
yes yeah so the process of digging
itself injects heat into the soil and we
do need this heat to dissipate and it
will depend in part on how conductive
Mars's surface soil is if it's at the
high range of the conductivity as we
expect by the time the mole gets to the
bottom we'll be able to take good data
if it's at the lower end of the range we
may need to wait a few tens of Sol's
but not longer than that okay second
thing is what what consequences is the
possible communication problems with MRO
the Mars relay orbiter going to have on
you I mean you have two things
communicating directly to earth but it's
just tonal stuff for for the data that
you're returning you need to
shoot it up to a more oh I we need a
pretty big pipe to send that data back
because there's quite a lot of it an MRO
is only one of the orbiting assets that
we can use we can use Mars Odyssey as
well which is still in operation it's
getting a little long in the tooth but
it's still there and then there's maven
the MAVEN spacecraft that observes the
atmosphere and that can also act as a
relay you can use all three mm-hmm all
right and the third thing is just I have
a sense okay let us take this and put it
in my backyard right and have a thing go
down five meters into my backyard and
suddenly from this well not suddenly but
over the course of let's say two earth
years I can ascertain the structure of
Earth albeit we have you know plates
floating around and it's a lot bigger
and so on but it just seems to me this
is extrapolating expects enormous ly
from a very small instrument a very soil
suite of instruments in single place and
Mars yeah well one is infinitely larger
than zero
so you can the seismometer is the thing
that's looking at the overall structure
of the planet the mole as an instrument
is looking at the local heat flow
properties and this needs to be matched
then two models of Mars that say what
the heat flow might be like at different
locations depending on crustal thickness
which is something that size can tell us
about maybe the presence of mantle
convection with sites can also tell us
about so these measurements work in
concert on earth earth is a very
complicated place and to get good
geothermal measurements for instance you
have to go below the water table you
have to get below any kind of fluid
circulation because earth has lots of
water and that really messes up those
kinds of measurements so there are
aspects about Mars that make it easier
for us but the key point is this has
never been done before we've never made
these kinds of measurements of heat flow
anywhere on Mars we've never had any
seismometer and there's quite a lot you
can do with only one seismometer you can
pinpoint the epicenter of something with
a seismometer as sensitive as this that
has those multiple seismometers you can
determine the direction and the
character of the signal there's a bit of
a bootstrapping process where you refine
your models of Mars but the old days of
meeting three seismometers to pinpoint
the epicenter of a quake you don't need
that anymore
thank you you bet thank you for taking
us on this exciting journey lady rockets
CEO and founder of California Space
Center and co-founder with grant
blasdell of Kopernik blockchain
technology with Kaepernick talkin which
mission is to seek space projects
hopefully like yours to provide
incremental funding should funding
originally budgeted for the project is
not selfish
this is using power of cryptocurrencies
to put it behind the industry that needs
to get funded better by us Americans may
I ask you a question if you would be
willing to share some of your dreams
that are aligned with what else would
you like to accomplish during or after
the mass mission
if budget was available and let's see if
we can make it happen what I would like
to see personally or what we would like
to do with this mission how about both
because you deserve personal dream
fulfillment you're doing what you do so
give us both but Kaepernick's mission is
to seek those projects which carry
incredible value but do not make it into
the traditional budget and see if we
could bring incremental funding so
looking at that our potential
commercialization of what you will be
generating there so we could create an
enterprise around it hmm well there's a
number of aspects of this and the
insight was a mission that was competed
within NASA it was proposed along with
many other missions to be awarded the
funds of the discovery program and
insight was one out of many missions
submitted and three finalists that
ultimately got that funding and so there
are other missions that NASA decided
these are good enough that we want to
look more closely at them but they could
only choose one winner and these are all
great science and great engineering and
I I mean my personal favorites or things
like I study planets I study geology I
want to know about Mars and I want to
know about asteroids and comets and the
idea of going to visit an asteroid or a
comment and to bring part of it home
both from the scientific perspective but
also potentially to use it can we can we
make something out of this resource I'm
an explorer I love going to places we
haven't been yet and that's one of the
things that excites me about insight
thank you and just thank you for
mentioning Vandenberg Air Force Base in
your presentation
you're incredible team not as visited as
florid I just came back from Vandenberg
SpaceX rocket lunch and looking forward
to seeing you in May I also saw their
rocket launch this morning all right so
three questions first does the mole have
a method of being retracted in case you
run into too many rocks it does not the
mole only goes one way and that's
forward and hopefully that's also down
that's up so - there were some early
designs about a way that we would be
able to reverse the mole to come back
but that's not part of this design it
only goes through all right thanks
second question why was Vandenberg
chosen over KSC and I hope you guys
launched in the evening again to forget
LA again it turns out that our launch
are our initial launch time is around
3:00 or 4:00 in the morning so get up
early and you might be able to see
something pretty amazing Vandenberg was
chosen I think improv primarily because
the schedule of launches at KSC in
Florida was such that it wasn't possible
to fit it in in the in the time period
where we wanted to launch so that we can
land at the correct time it's also
possible because insight is going on a
very powerful rocket that has enough
lift capacity to take us from this site
which is a little less favorable than
the one in Florida all the way to Mars
the last question would you guys
consider using a falcon heavy for future
Mars missions we did in fact consider
using the Falcon as one of the potential
launch vehicles for insight that was an
option that was expressed in one of the
original proposals we ultimately didn't
settle on that it wasn't developed
enough for us to use but you know it's a
possibility for future missions thank
you
um hello thank you very much for the
enlightening talk and for giving me a
chance to ask you a question I hope this
is not too tangential to the main theme
but it's you know I've ever since I was
very young I've been following with
great interests all of these projects to
send probes into space especially to
Mars and now it's getting to the point
where well we've seen quite a few of
these projects and especially those
landed what it kind of bothers me that
you know up till now there's been very
little collaboration between all of
these different projects is there any
plans for this particular project to
collaborate with any past projects or
any future ones what I'm thinking about
in particular is that I've just returned
from living in the United Arab Emirates
in Dubai I was teaching at a technical
university there call the Khalifa
University of Science and Technology
don't know if you've heard of them yet
they are trying very hard to be the
Caltech or MIT of the Middle East and
they've also come up with a very
ambitious project to put a probe on Mars
themselves for a little country like
that I I was astounded when I first
heard about that that they have these
plans
I've have to say that I I'm embarrassed
I don't remember the details you know
what is the timeframe I think it's
within the next three years or so so my
question is are you aware of that or you
wear that the there is this plan on the
part of the United Arab Emirates to put
a probe on Mars and again is there any
plans to coordinate with them on this I
personally have not heard of that effort
and I do wish them the best of luck with
it
going to Mars going into space is a
difficult endeavor and NASA in this
project in particular but for all of
them is a collaborative place
we collaborate the engineers and the
scientists communicate across missions
learning lessons and making sure that
mistakes aren't made again insite uses
the Phoenix lander so so much of that
engineering knowledge that was gained in
the production of that spacecraft has
gone into this mission and as I
mentioned insights instruments are
contributed by our foreign partners the
SycE instrument was built by a
consortium led by the French Space
Agency which includes a number of
different European countries HP cubed
built by the German space agency so
collaboration is not a foreign thing for
NASA but how a collaboration comes to be
who needs to be involved in making that
a reality and keeping it going once
it's once it's birthed and see it all
the way through to the end when you
arrive on Mars it's a complicated thing
but it's something that we do thank you
mm-hmm hi thank you for the presentation
if I understood you correctly and I very
well may have not done so the launch
window begins may 5th but I thought I
understood you to say that it could
launch later in May or in June depending
on you know us who assume weather or
other complications exactly but the
landing date is November 26 it's it's a
consequence of how the orbital dynamics
work out we can in fact choose a very
precise landing date and still have a
window of possible launch opportunities
so regardless of when it launches it
will land on November 26 as long as it
launches in that period of a month and a
half yes November 26 is the date okay
thank you
viking was landed in june 1976 now it
would be this will be 42 years later
practically and i remember our hips was
explained he was talking about the
viking and was the first time i'm not
true that few people here have seen him
like that i'd like to know what the
technology evolved how much it evolved
from the viking until insight and what
you expect and you have a 42 years and
we had different missions in between as
you know okay and what is the technology
and i don't know i mean i wish our hips
was here today to to see that the
improvement the big improvement or
anything and what you expect in the
future oh there's so much that has
changed in our ability to do planetary
or any space mission for instance the
seismograms
that size will record we wouldn't be
able to see can't even now send those
back in their entirety we have to
compress that data and send it back a
bit at a time and so the intelligence in
the lander in the size electronics and
the lander itself can look at those
signals pick out interesting events
compress them and send them home and
that computing power is one major
advance the seismometer is a viking had
a seismometer did you know there was a
seismometer on viking one of them on
because there were two Viking landers
one of them did not work its launch lock
mechanism I don't think disengaged and
so it never saw anything the other one
saw things but it was pretty much just
the lander shaking in the wind it made
it all the way to Mars and never got off
the deck because they didn't actually
have a way to deploy that seismometer
onto the
and so the principal investigator of
insight Bruce Banner
has been advocating for a seismic and
many geophysicists have been doing this
advocating for a seismometer and other
geophysical instruments to go to Mars
for a very long time and we now have an
instrument which is as good as the best
seismometers on earth that's just two
examples computing power and the
seismometer so many other things also
have improved and for the future I would
expect that it's gonna be a long time
before anything about exploration is
plug and play and it may never be so
we're never going to get to the point of
having a Star Trek tricorder and just be
able to do everything with one little
device we have to design things for the
specific environment the specific
constraints of the mission and in
particular the specific science
questions because every time we design a
mission and we send it somewhere and we
get the data to answer those questions
we get more questions that's what
science is about the Viking landed was
my first day at JPL starting at Japan
very exciting my first day at JPL was
about 20 days before Phoenix landed so
it's a it's a great way to start you
mentioned that you expect to see seismic
response from the passage of Phobos
overhead and that's really amazing
considering how small it is and so my
question is I've never quite understood
yes you have phobos's this little rock
and and it could have been an asteroid
but but it's in a more or less circular
orbit and how did it how what do we
speculate on how it got there and I've
also heard some some rumors that Phobos
might not be around to many million
years in the future
yeah maybe you could say something about
that so when an object
is in an elliptical orbit and when the
object an object is spinning the gravity
of the planet its orbiting can pull and
tug on that object so Phobos itself has
been spun and turned in different ways
by Mars's gravity and this movement of
the object isn't just a rigidbody Phobos
is big and rock is flexible on those
scales and that dissipates energy energy
gets dissipated as heat that energy
actually comes from phobos's orbit and
the elliptical orbit has more energy
than a circular one so over time as the
energy of the orbit gets dissipated away
as tidal heating both in Mars and in
Phobos the orbits circular eise's and it
also decays with time and this is what
your second point
over time this captured asteroid which
is probably the origin of Phobos will
approach Mars closer and closer and when
it gets close enough it will pass a
point a certain point where the tidal
forces overcome the strength of the rock
and Phobos will break up and probably
for a few million years at least be a
ring around Mars cool thank you mm-hmm
hi thanks for the lecture I came with my
dad who's in the front he's a big nerd
um this might be opening up a huge can
of worms but I was just kind of
wondering about the design process for
you guys and how you collaborated in
prototypes and if something didn't work
how you pivoted from there
that's basically what JPL does is solve
those kinds of problems and for every
kind of problem and I'm talking big
categories here whether it's developing
a communication system or like one
problem the seismometer the key
components of the size modos VBB are
inside an evacuated container they even
Mars is thin atmosphere is too much for
these really sensitive devices they have
to be in a vacuum to work properly we
had trouble making that vacuum stay
there because it has to be there when we
assemble the space
crafts make it all the way to Mars and
stay that way for at least two earth
years we had problems we had leaks we
had things we had to figure out and
there was lots of ways that we
approached that problem we created
prototypes in the lab we built things
and then we cut them in half and
destroyed them to understand why they
failed or why they worked we tried
different solutions we formed teams of
people both here at JPL and with our
international partners people whose only
job these Tiger teams their only job is
to focus on that problem because it's a
big problem so and and you know we
designed it first we didn't expect it to
leak but it turns out that it did so
there's a lot of times where things pop
up that you don't really expect and you
know learning lessons from previous
things having experts people with their
own internal knowledge and then the
knowledge of the institution those are
all things that make this possible now
and as best we can be possible on time
and within budget
and I was just wondering how long you
worked on this project for I'm sorry how
long you worked on the project for I was
just wondering I've been part of
insights since it was a proposal when it
was the discovery proposal in 2010 so
about seven years I've been working on
this first as a science implementation
engineer sort of working with the whole
payload section and then focusing more
down on HP cubed and I've been working
with the German space agency and serving
as a liaison between them and JPL and
Lockheed Martin who built a spacecraft
for about six years now thank you mm-hmm
hi thank you for the lecture how well
would these instruments work on an
asteroid or a smaller body with less
gravity
hmm yeah so size might work a lot better
in some respects on a smaller body
there's well I want to take that back I
don't actually know if it would work
better or worse but there would be
challenges to doing it because you need
the size has to have good coupling to
the ground on Mars the gravity is enough
to do that even on a sandy or rocky
surface on an asteroid
you've got the barest movement and
you'll start floating away or bouncing
around the surface like the feel a
lander on Rosetta did you need to be
anchored to the ground once you've
solved that problem you can probably get
some really interesting data from a
seismometer
and the heat flow probe definitely
useful on a comet or asteroid the
Rosetta mission also included a
penetrator of its own it was a different
design different shape but it was
designed to measure thermal conductivity
the mole could potentially be used on
the moon and could potentially be used
on an asteroid or comet but again you'll
have to solve that anchoring problem
otherwise it's gonna knock itself away
from the surface how about these
standardizing these instruments so that
they could be less expensive and used on
other bodies or on other missions
standardization might be possible if you
had a standard
of purpose of goals if you're
investigating different scientific
questions on different kinds of objects
you're probably going to need to go back
to the drawing board at least for some
of the major components and certainly
the you know exterior pieces of how it
actually interacts with the surface the
seismometer it's you know there are
probably aspects of it that could be
used on any body but getting the
instrument there and taking the data is
only part of the story being able to
interpret it it's another so I would say
it's possible but I don't think it's
likely at least not anytime soon we
don't have any kind of assembly line
process for this sort of instrumentation
yeah it just seems like these are the
tools to look at the interior like a
camera so for the interior so like being
able to come up with a camera that might
be my work on asteroids say so you
develop a low-gravity set of instruments
that you could put on multiple bodies or
multiple asteroids and it all be the
same instrument even cameras for an
orbiter say are not standard things
depending on what frequencies of light
they're looking at and how long they
have to stare at a particular place and
how much light they have to collect
whether they're looking at Mars or Titan
or the earth there's not a one-stop-shop
for even something like a camera so like
this seismometer if you wanted to put it
on Venus you couldn't do it it's it
would not last long enough you'd have to
build it out of something that won't
melt in 700 degree temperatures so you'd
have to build it out of you know you
know make circuits out of diamond or
something like that maybe it's
physically possible but it's certainly
not what this thing can do could you
send it to mercury yeah could you send
it to the moon yeah but you'd have to
get it there in a different way thank
you mm-hmm
good evening two questions one is
insight capable of detecting the
presence of liquid water hmm I would say
know where it's landing on the equator
we don't expect there to be any
subsurface ice for certain at least not
nothing stable and we don't there's
liquid water the places on Mars where
there might be liquid water like salty
brines that form slope streaks that's
nowhere near where we're going and I
think the abundance of water on Mars is
too low for it to show up in any kind of
seismic signal and it would certainly be
a big surprise if the it would show up
in conductivity data because the if
water is in the ground the conductivity
goes up very quickly because you've got
a lot of that liquid making contact
between particles so we saw a really
surprisingly high number from H P cubed
we'd have to come up with some
explanation for that and water could be
an explanation but I don't think it's
likely okay and number two is how will
the science collected from insight
affect future missions Wow
as I mentioned before every question we
answer raises new questions and so there
might be a desire to go back to Mars
with a different or additional suite of
instruments to help answer some question
that we don't even have at the moment
and possibly these instruments as the
previous gentleman alluded to they could
be used on other objects if these are
particularly successful maybe a mission
where the French or German Space
Agency's partner with to mercury for
instance would want to bring some you
know redos of these instruments and and
use them again to answer similar
questions but different because the
bodies are different thank you very much
thank you for the lecture so for this as
much as monitors my question is what if
you don't find
Mars clicks what if it's just from the
meteorite itself not from the planet
that itself a zero result if your
instrument is working properly and you
don't see the things you expect that's
still information that's still something
that you need to explain and it's gonna
take a lot of deep thinking to
understand why Mars is so quiet but this
is one of the reasons why it's good to
have Phobos and have that atmospheric
excitation and meteorite impacts so we
know those happen and we know we'll see
something but if Mars were that quiet
that'd be big news okay thank you mm-hmm
we have some questions from folk that
are listening to the simulcast men who
asks how did you select Elysium
Polynesia as the landing site so as I
mentioned size as a seismometer looking
at Mars as a planet can do its job from
anywhere and HP cubed wants broken up
ground but there are other constraints
for the lander it's solar powered for
instance it doesn't have a radioactive
power source like curiosity does so it
has to have the Sun and it's supposed to
operate for a full Mars year and we
might get dust storms dust settling on
the solar panels things that would make
them weakened over time so we needed to
pick a location where we were going to
have plenty of sunlight all year round
so we went to somewhere near the equator
also since we're coming down on that
heat shield and parachute system we need
to be low enough in elevation that the
atmosphere thin though it is is still
thick enough for that parachute to do
its job if we landed in the highland
regions a parachute would be not working
properly by the time we hit the ground
there are a few other places along the
equator that would meet that elevation
requirement but they're really windy and
we don't want that either we don't want
to land in areas that are particularly
dusty we
don't want to land in areas that are
really rocky and you add all of these
constraints together there actually
aren't that many places on Mars that fit
the bill
so this is the reason why Elysium
Planitia was chosen and there's a whole
process a whole set of geologists
working here at JPL led by matt
galumbeck who have worked to verify that
the landing site we've chosen is the
best place for us and then michael asks
what is the tip of the mole made of it's
made of titanium and the hammer on the
inside is heavy and is made of tungsten
so Seguin asks after the data are sent
back to earth
how long before scientists around the
world can use them NASA has rules about
this NASA is a publicly funded
institution and all the data we take
from every mission becomes publicly
available all the raw information that
comes down from the satellites is put
out there for everyone to use but after
a short embargo there's a short period
of time where the data are the province
of the scientists that have worked on
this mission because in the scientific
world getting first access to that data
and being able to publish your results
is very important thing for the people
who have spent so many years working on
this project so they have a period of
time where they have sole access to the
data but NASA has rules that this data
must become publicly available in a
short period I think at most it's six
months but you have to justify that for
insight I think it will be much less
than that
and finally Los Angeles asks what
instruments were considered but didn't
make the final payload it turns out that
insight has been a brainchild of our
principal investigator for quite some
time not necessarily with the same name
and not necessarily with the same
complement of instruments as it has been
proposed in different guises in the past
this mission has had a different
complement of instruments as part of its
payload sometimes more elaborate there
was a previous version I think in 2006
that had two moles just in case one of
them ran into Iraq but you know as this
mission has evolved so we've made
choices about what makes it into the
mission what doesn't so these
instruments what you see here is pretty
much what was proposed when the mission
first went to NASA in 2010 there are a
few additional things we added I think a
very sensitive barometer to look for
that atmospheric excitation and we added
a magnetometer to determine the local
magnetic characteristics these are small
added pieces and you never do just
anything but this big never to just add
a magnetometer you never just put in a
piece of tape there it's always
complicated so there was there wasn't
really a selection process for the
instruments now other missions like
curiosity and the mission similar to at
Mars 2020 which will be launching in
2020 we hope did have a competitive
process for the payloads NASA put out a
call that said here are the broad
scientific goals we want to address
feel free to propose an instrument that
addresses one or more of them and then
that is competed the mission itself was
not but the payloads were in sight
didn't quite follow that paradigm if
there aren't any more questions sir
please have you have you thought about
making an army of bees and sending that
to collect more data as a faster way of
collecting data and making that thing
throw like a doc charging device hmm
well flying on Mars is a difficult
prospect it's got a really thin
atmosphere nonetheless we are actually
working on a Mars helicopter it's like a
double rotor drone that may be going on
the 2020 Rover we don't have a way of
producing very small motes sort of
individually addressed sensors that can
move around
surface of Mars it would be great to get
more data but again the seismometer
that's about as small as we can make it
we don't have a device that's that
sensitive that can be made so small one
more thing mm-hmm
have you thought about sending water to
Mars and see how we react and like salt
water or like you know like how it
reacts you uh I know the answer to this
question really well because I spent six
years of my life building Mars and
walk-in freezers when I was a grad
student
I studied the growth and evolution of
subsurface ice on Mars and the I the
whole idea behind that is how does water
in Mars atmosphere and in the subsurface
move around at the present on Mars water
could not exist in a stable form as a
liquid it would either evaporate or
freeze if you add salt to it you might
get to the point where you can have a
really salty brine that could exist on
Mars today on a warm day near the
equator so but we can understand the
physics the physics of water the physics
of a salt solution in an environment
like Mars we can simulate that in the
lab and we know what to expect in those
cases that doesn't mean Mars still
doesn't have surprises for us but it's a
big place and the geologic context where
does that water come from why is it
there that's the important question not
what it does when it's there the total
power produced by the solar rays I'd
have to look that number up I'm sorry
and with that we're done thank you very
much
