{"id":5155,"date":"2019-01-14T07:17:12","date_gmt":"2019-01-14T12:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/?p=5155"},"modified":"2019-01-11T08:17:36","modified_gmt":"2019-01-11T13:17:36","slug":"exciting-insight-into-the-red-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/?p=5155","title":{"rendered":"Exciting InSight into the Red Planet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Sorge \u201819
\nEE<\/em> Co-Managing Editor<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The InSight Mars lander touched down on its new home just before 3 PM on November 26th, completing a rapid descent through the Martian atmosphere and its nearly seven month journey across 300 million miles of space. Cheers erupted from Mission Control in NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and across the nation when signals finally arrived confirming the landing; with this first successful landing of a robot on mars since the Curiosity rover in 2012, there is much to be excited about.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was intense, and you could feel the emotion,\u201d said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, a member of the InSight team at JPL. \u201cIt was very, very quiet when it was time to be quiet and of course very celebratory with every little new piece of information that was received.\u201d
\n
\nWhen it was launched on May 5th, InSight was accompanied by two suitcase-sized CubeSats called \u201cMarCos\u201d that were engineered to relay real-time information back to Earth regarding the spacecraft\u2019s status as it approached the Red Planet.
\nHowever, even at the speed of light, signals take several minutes to travel between Mars and Earth. With Insight\u2019s ultimate time from entering the atmosphere and landing on Mars only being about a nerve-wracking 6.5 minutes, instantaneous communication to control or even monitor the final moments of the journey is impossible.<\/p>\n

Therefore, InSight\u2019s entire landing sequence, from entry at over 12,000 miles per hour, to the eventual soft landing, aided by a heat shield, supersonic parachute, and retro-rockets, had to be programmed well in advance. As the most vital part of the voyage ensued on the 26th, scientists could only wait for the MarCos\u2019 signal that InSight had landed and been deployed as planned; a feat only 40% of Mars missions have accomplished.<\/p>\n

With InSight safely on the ground in a flat region slightly north of the equator known as Elysium Planitia and images of the craft\u2019s surroundings arriving, the most stressful part of the mission is complete. Now, InSight\u2019s team can begin to focus on the lander\u2019s unique task of testing the Martian interior to help uncover the mystery of the planet\u2019s formation.<\/p>\n

InSight principle investigator Bruce Banerdt of JPL said to NASA, \u201cLanding was thrilling, but I\u2019m looking forward to the drilling\u2026 our engineering and science teams will hit the ground running, beginning to plan where to deploy our science instruments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within the next few months, the main scientific instruments of the mission, the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structures (SEIS) and Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3), will be deployed. These tools will grant us new and perhaps surprising insight into the structure of Mars, and clues as to how the rocky planets, including our own, formed and evolved.
\nNASA explained the overarching goal of the mission. \u201cInSight will address a fundamental issue of solar system science, not just specific questions about a single planet. By studying Mars, InSight would illuminate the earliest evolution of rocky planets, including Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additionally, with bolstered optimism for future missions, NASA claims that we are one step closer to putting humans on Mars in the 2030\u2019s.<\/p>\n

The famous \u201cseven minutes of terror\u201d culminated in relief with the MarCos working flawlessly and InSight touching down as planned, and as senior Dan Pitagora said, \u201cThe InSight mission is a landmark success\u2026 [It] unlocked many doors [for discovery].\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Sorge \u201819 EE Co-Managing Editor The InSight Mars lander touched down on its new home just before 3 PM on November 26th, completing a rapid descent through the Martian atmosphere and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5155"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5160,"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5155\/revisions\/5160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thseagleseye.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}