{"id":13358,"date":"2019-02-04T23:46:39","date_gmt":"2019-02-04T15:46:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/insight-lander-completes-seismometer-deployment-on-mars\/"},"modified":"2019-02-04T23:46:39","modified_gmt":"2019-02-04T15:46:39","slug":"insight-lander-completes-seismometer-deployment-on-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/insight-lander-completes-seismometer-deployment-on-mars\/","title":{"rendered":"InSight lander completes seismometer deployment on Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"
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NASA\u2019s InSight lander has placed a protective enclosure over a French-developed seismometer designed to detect tremors on Mars, completing the deployment of the first of two science instruments delivered to the Red Planet in November.<\/p>\n

Using its nearly 8-foot-long (2.4-meter) robotic arm, InSight followed commands beamed up from Earth to cover the seismometer package with a dome-shaped wind and thermal shield Saturday.<\/p>\n

The milestone follows weeks of leveling and cable adjustments since InSight\u2019s robot arm picked up the seismometer itself from the lander\u2019s deck and placed it on a rock-free portion of the Martian surface that was within reach of the stationary lander.<\/p>\n

The shield will ensure winds and temperature swings do not affect the sensors inside the seismometer instrument. Without the added protection, winds could add \u201cnoise\u201d to the instrument\u2019s measurements, making it harder to discern when it registers a quake on Mars, scientists said.<\/p>\n

Ringed with a thermal barrier and chain mail around the bottom, the wind and thermal shield will also moderate temperatures inside the instrument. Scientists were concerned warming and cooling trends might expand and contract metal springs and other parts inside the instrument, according to NASA.<\/p>\n

\u201cTemperature is one of our biggest bugaboos,\u201d said Bruce Banerdt of NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, principal investigator for the InSight mission. \u201cThink of the shield as putting a cozy over your food on a table. It keeps SEIS from warming up too much during the day or cooling off too much at night. In general, we want to keep the temperature as steady as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Diagram of InSight\u2019s seismometer package. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Temperatures measured by InSight since its Nov. 26 landing on Mars fluctuate by about 170 degrees Fahrenheit, or 94 degrees Celsius, over the course of a Martian day, or sol, NASA said in a statement.<\/p>\n

InSight braked to a rocket-assisted landing at Elysium Planitia, a broad equatorial plain.<\/p>\n

The seismometer instrument was provided by the French space agency, CNES, and its development was led by the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris. JPL built the wind and thermal shield, and leads the overall InSight mission.<\/p>\n

The seismometer package was designed with several layers of insulation against temperature changes on Mars. When some parts inside expand and contract, others are designed to do so in the opposite direction to counteract the effects of the changes, according to NASA. The seismic sensors themselves are encased within a vacuum-sealed titanium sphere, which is then overlaid with a hexagonal copper container with honeycomb cells that trap air and keep it from moving.<\/p>\n

\u201cMars provides an excellent gas for this insulation: Its thin atmosphere is primarily composed of carbon dioxide, which at low pressure is especially slow to conduct heat,\u201d NASA said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The instrument contains three sets of seismic sensors at its core, which was placed on the surface Dec. 19.<\/p>\n

Scientists will also monitor weather conditions, including winds and temperatures, with a meteorological station carried aboard inSight. The weather information can be applied to seismic measurements to filter out data that might have been corrupted by environmental conditions.<\/p>\n

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A camera on the elbow of InSight\u2019s robotic arm captured 11 images stitched together to create this self-portrait in December. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Next up for InSight will be the deployment of the mission\u2019s other main instrument: the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package, or HP3.<\/p>\n

HP3 was developed by DLR, the German space agency, and is scheduled to be transferred from InSight\u2019s instrument deck to the Martian surface with the robot arm next week.<\/p>\n

The heat probe consists of a mechanized mole that will dig into the Martian crust to a depth of up to 16 feet, or 5 meters, deeper than any previous Mars mission has reached.<\/p>\n

The mole is expected to take around six weeks to reach that depth with roughly 10,000 individual mechanical hammer blows, accounting for several planned pauses to allow the instrument to record thermal conductivity measurements.<\/p>\n

The underground probe will measure the heat coming from Mars\u2019s interior, providing information for scientists to study the planet\u2019s internal structure.<\/p>\n

Combining the heat probe and the seismic results \u2014 which will also tell scientists about layers inside Mars \u2014 Banerdt\u2019s team seeks to examine how the rocky planets formed in the ancient solar system, providing a comparison for what geologists already know about Earth.<\/p>\n

The procedures to place the instruments on the Martian surface represent a first in the exploration of Mars. While previous NASA missions have used rovers to drive around the Red Planet, none before InSight have physically placed payloads into permanent positions directly on the surface.<\/p>\n

The seismometer and heat probe will transmit their readings back to InSight through umbilical cables. The lander will then beam the data back to Earth through communications relay orbiters flying overhead.<\/p>\n

\u201cI liken it to \u2026 playing that \u201cClaw\u201d game at a carnival, but you\u2019re doing it with a really, really valuable prize, and you\u2019re doing it blindfolded, where you can only take occasional pictures, and then you\u2019re doing it via remote control on another planet,\u201d said Elizabeth Barrett, InSight instrument operations lead at JPL, describing the carefully-choreographed procedure to move the instruments to the Martian surface.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes a little bit longer,\u201d she said. \u201cYou need take more pauses to make sure you actually have the grapple of the payload before you lift it up, and it\u2019s actually on the ground before you let it go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Engineers created a mock-up of the lander, the instruments and the surrounding environment in a lab at JPL to simulate the instrument deployment procedures before executing them on Mars.<\/p>\n

\u201cSensitive is really an understatement,\u201d Banerdt said of the seismometer. \u201cIt\u2019s an exquisitely sensitive device for measuring the motion of the ground. And when we talk about motion, we\u2019re talking about vibrations that have an amplitude comparable to the size of an atom.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are waves that were generated, maybe, by a marsquake on the other side of the planet, have traveled all the way through the planet, getting their waveform modified as they go through the planet and picking up information about the deep interior structure, and then we are able to pick it up when it comes back up to the surface under the seismometer,\u201d Banerdt said before InSight\u2019s launch last May.<\/p>\n

The seismic sensors aboard InSight evolved from mission concepts in the 1990s and 2000s that would have dispatched multiple small probes to Mars, creating a global geophysical network. InSight will give scientists just one seismic station, but experts have developed techniques to glean information about the interior of Mars, even with a single seismometer.<\/p>\n

Researchers have attempted seismic detections on Mars before, but seismometers on NASA\u2019s Viking landers in the 1970s provided inconclusive results. The instruments were mounted the decks of the landers, making them susceptible from interference from spacecraft vibrations and winds.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where the wind and thermal enclosure deployed Saturday comes in.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot only do you have to have a very sensitive device for measuring those motions but you have to protect it from everything else that might affect it,\u201d Banerdt said. \u201cWe have several different layers of protection, it\u2019s sort of like a Russian doll.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once the instruments are deployed and operational, the InSight science mission is planned to last one Martian year, or roughly two Earth years.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NASA\u2019s InSight lander has placed a protective enclosure over a French-developed seismometer designed to detect tremors on Mars, completing the deployment of the first of two science instruments delivered to the Red Planet in November. Using its nearly 8-foot-long (2.4-meter) robotic arm, InSight followed commands beamed up from Earth to cover the seismometer package with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[690,242,455,1916,927,1183,472,190],"class_list":["post-13358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-cnes","tag-france","tag-germany","tag-hp3","tag-insight","tag-jet-propulsion-laboratory","tag-lockheed-martin","tag-nasa"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13358"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}