{"id":15669,"date":"2016-03-09T20:14:08","date_gmt":"2016-03-09T12:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/insight-mars-lander-escapes-cancellation-aims-for-2018-launch\/"},"modified":"2016-03-09T20:14:08","modified_gmt":"2016-03-09T12:14:08","slug":"insight-mars-lander-escapes-cancellation-aims-for-2018-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/insight-mars-lander-escapes-cancellation-aims-for-2018-launch\/","title":{"rendered":"InSight Mars lander escapes cancellation, aims for 2018 launch"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The
The InSight lander in its cruise stage configuration prior to undergoing acoustic testing at Lockheed Martin. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/Lockheed Martin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The InSight Mars lander has won a reprieve from NASA\u2019s top managers after persistent problems with one of the probe\u2019s science instruments caused the mission to miss a narrow launch window planned for this month.<\/p>\n

The space agency announced Wednesday the InSight mission\u2019s launch has been rescheduled for May 5, 2018, the next time Earth and Mars are properly positioned to permit a direct route to the red planet.<\/p>\n

The two-year delay is expected to increase the cost of the mission, but the agency said the amount of cost growth is still being assessed.<\/p>\n

NASA may owe a penalty payment to United Launch Alliance, the InSight\u2019s mission\u2019s launch provider, after missing the contracted launch window that opened March 4.<\/p>\n

Officials in December decided to suspend preparations for launching InSight this year after engineers repeatedly had trouble sealing an airtight vacuum enclosure containing sensors to detect and study seismic tremors on Mars.<\/p>\n

InSight\u2019s mission focuses on investigating the interior of Mars by measuring quakes and the flow of heat from the red planet\u2019s warm interior reaching the surface.<\/p>\n

The seismometer instrument aboard InSight is managed by CNES, the French space agency, under an agreement with NASA and the InSight science team.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe science goals of InSight are compelling, and the NASA and CNES plans to overcome the technical challenges are sound,\u201d said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA\u2019s science mission directorate in Washington. \u201cThe quest to understand the interior of Mars has been a longstanding goal of planetary scientists for decades. We\u2019re excited to be back on the path for a launch, now in 2018.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bruce Banerdt, InSight\u2019s principal investigator at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said the mission\u2019s flight plan will likely remain unchanged for the 2018 launch opportunity.<\/p>\n

InSight will blast off aboard ULA\u2019s Atlas 5 launcher from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, making it the first Mars mission to depart Earth from the West Coast. Previous U.S. probes to the red planet have all launched from Cape Canaveral.<\/p>\n

\"Artist's
Artist\u2019s concept of the InSight lander on Mars. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The positions of the planets in May 2018 will be more favorable than this year, reducing the energy boost needed to propel InSight toward Mars. The 2018 launch opportunity is the best to reach Mars since 2003.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough we haven\u2019t gotten final confirmation from our launch services people, we know of no reason right now that would cause this to change,\u201d Banerdt wrote in an email to Spaceflight Now. \u201c2018 is actually a lower energy Mars opportunity, which will likely give us more launch margin (which was already ample in 2016).\u201d<\/p>\n

Landing is targeted in Elysium Planitia, a broad equatorial plain on Mars. The mission needs a relatively flat, boulder-free landing zone to safely touch down and conduct its experiments.<\/p>\n

JPL will assume responsibility for fixing the component that gave French engineers headaches last year, NASA said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Engineers at JPL \u201cwill redesign, build and conduct qualifications of the new vacuum enclosure for the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), the component that failed in December,\u201d the NASA press release said. \u201cCNES will lead instrument level integration and test activities, allowing the InSight project to take advantage of each organization\u2019s proven strengths.\u201d<\/p>\n

Banerdt told a meeting of Mars scientists last week that the delay is expected to cost around $150 million, and the costs are likely to be shared by NASA and CNES.<\/p>\n

InSight managers pitched NASA leaders March 1 on a plan to fix the seismometer issue in time for the May 2018 launch opportunity, and the agency officials agreed with the proposal.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Atlas 5 rocket\u2019s payload fairing assigned to the InSight launch is pictured inside a clean room at Vandenberg Air Force Base late last year, before the mission\u2019s launch delay. Credit: NASA\/Joe Davila<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Mars lander is part of NASA\u2019s Discovery program, a line of cost-capped missions selected through competitions held every few years. InSight won a competition in 2012, besting proposals to send a floating scientific station to a hydrocarbon ocean on Saturn\u2019s moon Titan and land on a comet\u2019s nucleus.<\/p>\n

InSight\u2019s cost limit before the delay was $675 million, including the launch. As of December, NASA had spent approximately $525 million on the project.<\/p>\n

The InSight spacecraft was already at its launch base in California when NASA decided to postpone the mission in December.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson with Lockheed Martin, InSight\u2019s prime contractor, said the spacecraft returned to the company\u2019s satellite manufacturing plant near Denver on Feb. 6 to be put into storage awaiting the next launch window.<\/p>\n

The InSight lander, its Atlas 5 rocket, and the mission\u2019s other main instrument \u2014 a German-built underground heat probe \u2014 were all ready for liftoff this year, only to be grounded by the seismometer problem.<\/p>\n

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

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

The InSight lander in its cruise stage configuration prior to undergoing acoustic testing at Lockheed Martin. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/Lockheed Martin The InSight Mars lander has won a reprieve from NASA\u2019s top managers after persistent problems with one of the probe\u2019s science instruments caused the mission to miss a narrow launch window planned for this month. The […]<\/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":[724,690,1913,927,1183,472,367,1561],"class_list":["post-15669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-atlas-5","tag-cnes","tag-discovery-program","tag-insight","tag-jet-propulsion-laboratory","tag-lockheed-martin","tag-mars","tag-planetary-science"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15669"}],"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=15669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}