Mars probe poised for touchdown
Mars is about to get its first U.S. visitor in years: a three-legged, one-armed geologist to dig deep and listen for quakes.
NASA’s InSight makes its grand entrance through the rosetinted Martian skies on Monday, after a six-month, 480 millionkilometre journey. It will be the first American spacecraft to land since the Curiosity rover in 2012 and the first dedicated to exploring underground.
NASA is going with a triedand-true method to get this mechanical miner to the surface of the red planet. Engine firings will slow its final descent and the spacecraft will plop down on its rigid legs, mimicking the landings of earlier successful missions.
That’s where old school ends on this $1 billion US-European effort .
Once flight controllers in California determine the coast is clear at the landing site — fairly flat and rock free — InSight’s 1.8-metre arm will remove the two main science experiments from the lander’s deck and place them directly on the Martian surface.
No spacecraft has attempted anything like that before.
The firsts don’t stop there. One experiment will attempt to penetrate 5 metres into Mars, using a self-hammering nail with heat sensors to gauge the planet’s internal temperature. That would shatter the out-of-thisworld depth record of 2 ½ metres drilled by the Apollo moonwalkers nearly a half-century ago for lunar heat measurements.
The astronauts also left behind instruments to measure moonquakes. InSight carries the first seismometers to monitor for marsquakes — if they exist. Yet another experiment will calculate Mars’ wobble, providing clues about the planet’s core.
It won’t be looking for signs of life, past or present. No life detectors are on board.
The spacecraft is like a self-sufficient robot, said lead scientist Bruce Banerdt of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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