from the should-name-one-of-these-craft-"Marvin" dept.
NASA's next Mars spacecraft has arrived at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, for final preparations before a launch scheduled in March 2016 and a landing on Mars six months later.
Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built and tested the spacecraft and delivered it on Dec. 16 from Buckley Air Force Base in Denver to Vandenberg, on the central California Coast.
Preparations are on a tight schedule for launch during the period March 4 through March 30. The work ahead includes installation and testing of one of the mission's key science instruments, its seismometer, which is scheduled for delivery to Vandenberg in January.
"InSight has traveled the first leg of its journey, getting from Colorado to California, and we're on track to start the next leg, to Mars, with a launch in March," said InSight Principal Investigator Bruce Banerdt, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
The seismometer, provided by France's national space agency (CNES), includes a vacuum container around its three main sensors. Maintaining the vacuum is necessary for the instrument's extremely high sensitivity; the seismometer is capable of measuring ground motions as small as the width of an atom. A vacuum leak detected during testing of the seismometer was repaired last week in France and is undergoing further testing.
InSight's heat-probe instrument from Germany's space agency (DLR), the lander's robotic arm and the rest of the payload are already installed on the spacecraft.
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A NASA mission previously scheduled to launch a robotic lander towards Mars in March may face up to a two year delay due to a fault in a seismometer provided by the French space agency:
The InSight spacecraft was scheduled to take off between 4-30 March and land on the Red Planet six months later to examine Mars' geology in depth.
Nasa said it had decided to call off the launch because the agency was unable to fix a leak affecting the seismometer, which required a vacuum seal to cope with harsh conditions on Mars. The instrument is designed to measure ground movements.
"A decision on a path forward will be made in the coming months, but one thing is clear: Nasa remains fully committed to the scientific discovery and exploration of Mars," Nasa's John Grunsfeld was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency. The next time the earth and Mars are favourably aligned for a launch will be in 2018.
[More after the break.]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 19 2015, @02:31PM
You didn't mention how the drive went or if the weather was slightly chilly (it being December). Some of us gots to know.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Saturday December 19 2015, @03:40PM
Info about the "Insight" lander is here: http://insight.jpl.nasa.gov [nasa.gov] but the purpose is "to investigate the formation and evolution of terrestrial planets by studying the deep interior of Mars"
From the looks of it, it's solar powered, so it has a pretty limited mission compared to our rovers which are now nuclear (decay) powered.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 19 2015, @04:26PM
And TFA does not say which launch vehicle is being used. Delta IV Heavy? Hopefully it's a twilight launch window so we can see the pretty colors in the sky from San Diego, home of the loser chargers.
(Score: 2) by gman003 on Saturday December 19 2015, @05:16PM
Vandenberg launches to the south, for polar (or at least, highly-inclined) orbits, or to the west for retrograde orbits. Canaveral launches to the east, for equatorial (or near-equatorial) orbits.
For a launch to Mars, you basically want an orbit in the plane of the earth's orbit - they're off by only a couple degrees. And even this near the winter solstice, that orbit is closer to equatorial than to polar - in March, it'll be almost identical. A retrograde launch has to fight the Earth's rotation, while a prograde one is helped by it - this is why every country that can do so, launches to the east.
So why launch from Vandenberg? Every carrier rocket that can launch from Vandenberg can launch from Canaveral - specifically, the Atlas V that will be used for it. I will note that every other Mars mission has launched from Canaveral.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 20 2015, @05:47AM
Because [spaceflightnow.com].
(Score: 2) by gman003 on Sunday December 20 2015, @08:24AM
So, traffic congestion at Canaveral, plus an overpowered launcher being the one available because they're reusing a system so old the original launcher is discontinued. Sort of makes sense, but still seems wasteful.