Mars InSight: NASA's Next
Mission to Red Planetl
NASA's next mission to Mars,
Interior Exploration Using
Seismic Investigations, Geodesy
and Heat Transport,or
InSight, will be the first
interplanetary launch from the
West Coast. InSight's launch
period opens May 5, 2018, and
extends through June 8. InSight
will launch into space from the
U.S. Air Force's Vandenberg Air
Force Base in California.
InSight will use a suite in
instruments to study the deep
interior of the Red Planet. Its
scientific goals are to learn
how all rocky planets, including
Earth first formed.
Edited B-roll: InSight solar
array deployment in cleanroom
at Lockheed Martin Space in
Denver. Time-lapse video of
packing for shipment. Arrival at
Vandenberg. Replica of InSight
in JPL lab. Microchip with
public's names. Launch
visibility. Mission animations.
[natural sound]
Interview excerpts:
Bruce Banerdt, InSight
Principal Investigator, JPL
Tom Hoffman, InSight Project
Manager, JPL
Jaime Singer, InSight Instrument
Deployment Lead, JPL
We've sent a lot of missions
to Mars in the past.
We've sent rovers.
We've sent orbiters.
And they've done a lot of
really, really great science
and a lot of really
interesting measurements.
But those measurements just
scratch the surface of Mars.
We know a lot about
the surface of Mars.
We know a lot about
its atmosphere,
even about its ionosphere.
But we don't know much
about what goes on
a mile below the surface, much
less 2,000 miles below
the surface, down to the center.
And this will be the first
mission that's going to Mars
specifically to investigate
the huge extent of
Mars below the surfacd.
Insight is almost
ready to launch,
and it's going to Mars
to do the science,
to make the measurements that,
scientifically and personally,
I've been waiting for
over 30 years for.
As a graduate student I was
doing research on Mars, and
I just needed to have the
thickness of the crust.
I just needed the thickness
of the crust!
And we didn't have it.
And seismology was
the way to do it.
And so I thought, well maybe
someday somebody will put a
seismometer on Mars and
get this measurement
so I can do my research.
And so it's kind of an amazing
journey for me to look back
and say, I'm the guy who's
actually going to
put that seismometer on Mars,
get that information, and
now I can go back and finish
the job I was trying to do
30 years ago! It's
an amazing feeling!
Insight carries a seismometer,
which measures the
seismic waves that have traveled
through Mars from Marsquakes
and maps out the deep interior
structure of Mars.
It has a heat flow probe that
goes down 15 feet
and measures the amount of heat
coming out of the planet
to understand the vigor of
its geological engine.
And it has a radio science
experiment, which uses the
radio on the spacecraft to
measure small variations
in the wobble of Mars' pole
to understand more about
the structure and
composition of the core.
The InSight mission will be
the very first mission to launch
from the Vandenberg Air Force
Base on the West Coast.
Typically these launches
have always gone from
the East Coast.
InSight will be the very first
mission to robotically deploy
instruments from the
spacecraft deck
to the surface of another
planet, this planet Mars.
InSight'll also be the very
first mission to land and
survive for a full Martian year,
which is two Earth years,
with just solar arrays.
InSight will also be the
very first mission to
give Mars a checkup since four
and a half billion years.
The primary mission is planned
to be one Mars year,
which is about two Earth years.
However, there's no limitations
to our lifetime.
So we could last as long as
we're getting power
from the solar arrays
as long as Mars is behaving
itself, we'll be able to survive
and we'll continue to get the
scientific data back
that the scientists have been
craving for such a long time.
InSight will launch from
Vandenberg Air Force Base.
After that InSight goes on a
six and a half month cruise
to get to Mars. It's on
a direct trajectory.
So it'll get there
pretty quick.
As fast as you can get to Mars.
Once we get to Mars, then we
go through what we call the
entry, descent, and landing, or
as we like to say, EDL.
We go through that process,
which is about 7 minutes.
We go from about 12,500
miles per hour to zero
in 12 minutes, which is
incredibly fast.
We  use a variety of techniques
to slow us down as we
enter the atmosphere.
First we have an ablative
material on our heat shield
which protects us from the first
part of the atmosphere,
where we're going the fastest.
That slows us down. We're still
at a supersonic speed
when we deploy our parachute.
The parachute further
slows us down.
When we get closer to the ground
and we start aquiring data
from our radar, landing radar,
then we know that we can
drop the parachute
and we can do a propulsive
landing down to the surface.
And we'll be going about
5 miles an hour
when we touch down
on the surface.
InSight is the first
interplanetary launch
from Vandenberg, and so
everyone's really excited
to be so close to home,
just able to go up...
watch the launch and
know that we're
sending something straight
from California to Mars.
Going to Mars never gets old.
This is the third Mars mission
that I've worked on,
and I'm still just as
excited about it.
So excited to see that first
image that we get down
from InSight on landing day.
It's going to be a different
place on Mars.
I mean, how many places have we
really seen on another planet?
The most fun or interesting
thing about InSight
from an engineer's point of view
is really about we're
playing the claw game
super far away on Mars.
We're taking this grapple and
we're gonna pick up
an instrument and lift
it up off the deck
and put it down on Mars.
So I like to say that
we're playing the claw game on
Mars--with no joystick.
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
California Institute
of Technology
