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takyon writes:

NASA's InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) Mars mission has been rescheduled for May 2018. The mission was planned for launch in March 2016, but was delayed after a leak was found in the vacuum enclosure of a French-made seismometer. Repairs to the instrument will cost the French manufacturers $150 million.

The lander will drill up to 5 meters into Mars's crust and measure temperature as well as seismic activity:

The seismometer instrument's main sensors need to operate within a vacuum chamber to provide the exquisite sensitivity needed for measuring ground movements as small as half the radius of a hydrogen atom. The rework of the seismometer's vacuum container will result in a finished, thoroughly tested instrument in 2017 that will maintain a high degree of vacuum around the sensors through rigors of launch, landing, deployment and a two-year prime mission on the surface of Mars.

$525 million of the mission's capped $675 million budget had been spent by December 2015, and a reassessment of the mission's cost taking into account the two-year delay will occur by August once arrangements are made with the launch vehicle provider.

Also at NPR, NYT, Reuters, NASASpaceflight.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

NASA has launched InSight, a Mars lander that will study the interior of Mars and measure "Marsquakes":

Initially flying through early-morning fog, a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Air force Base's Space Launch Complex 3 to send NASA's Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) lander on a six-month journey to Mars.

[...] InSight is a 794-pound (360-kilogram) robotic lander designed to study the interior structure of Mars. With its two solar panels deployed the lander is 19 feet 8 inches (6 meters) long. Based on the design of NASA's 2008 Phoenix lander, the spacecraft is designed to use its eight-foot (2.4 meter) robotic arm to place a seismometer, a wind and thermal shield to protect that instrument and a self-burrowing temperature probe on the Martian surface. The probe will use these science instruments and a radio experiment called RISE to study the deep interior of Mars to learn about how all rocky planets, including the Earth, formed. The InSight mission is part of NASA's Discovery Program.

"The Discovery Program is all about doing firsts, getting to places that we've never been to before, and this mission will probe the interior of another terrestrial planet giving us an idea of the size of the core, the mantle, the crust and our ability to compare that with the Earth," said NASA Chief Scientist Jim Green during a NASA pre-launch briefing on May 3. "This is of fundamental importance for us to understand the origin of our solar system and how it became the way is today."

NASA's next Mars mission will be Mars 2020, a rover currently scheduled to launch in July 2020. InSight is the Discovery Program's 12th mission. The next two to launch will be Lucy (2021) and Psyche (2022). NASA will launch the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) no earlier than May 19.

Also at BBC and USA Today.

See also: Are We There Yet? How scientists and engineers handle a spacecraft's months-long journey to Mars

Original Submission

takyon writes:

First CubeSats to travel the solar system snap 'Pale Blue Dot' homage:

The Insight launch earlier this month had a couple stowaways: a pair of tiny CubeSats that are already the farthest such tiny satellites have ever been from Earth by a long shot. And one of them got a chance to snap a picture of their home planet as an homage to the Voyager mission's famous "Pale Blue Dot." It's hardly as amazing a shot as the original but it's still cool.

The CubeSats, named MarCO-A and B, are an experiment to test the suitability of pint-size craft for exploration of the solar system; previously they have only ever been deployed into orbit.

That changed on May 5, when the Insight mission took off, with the MarCO twins detaching on a similar trajectory to the geology-focused Mars lander. It wasn't long before they went farther than any CubeSat has gone before.

Pale Blue Dot.

Also at Business Insider.

Previously: NASA Launches InSight Mission to Study the Interior of Mars

Related: New Horizons Captures the Farthest Image From Earth Ever Made
New Horizons Spacecraft Will Take a "Pale Blue Dot" Photo in 2019

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Tiny Cubesat Snaps Photo of Mars for 1st Time Ever

A tiny Mars-approaching spacecraft has snapped a photo of its target, marking the first time that a cubesat has ever captured an image of the Red Planet. One of NASA's two briefcase-size Mars Cube One (MarCO) cubesats acquired the image on Oct. 2, when it was about 8 million miles (12.8 million kilometers) from the Red Planet, agency officials said.

The MarCO twins — officially known as MarCO-A and MarCO-B, but nicknamed "Eve" and "Wall-E," respectively, after characters in the 2008 Pixar film "Wall-E" — launched with NASA's InSight Mars lander in early May. The main goal of the MarCO mission is to prove that cubesats, whose operations to date have been restricted to Earth orbit, can indeed make the long trek to the Red Planet. Their success could help pave the way for much greater activity in deep space by small, low-cost spacecraft, mission team members have said.

[...] MarCO-B (Wall-E) took the newly released image to test the exposure settings of a wide-angle camera, NASA officials added in the same statement.

The MarCO duo will attempt to relay home to Earth data from InSight during the lander's Mars-touchdown attempt, which will take place on Nov. 26. But this is not a crucial duty; other NASA spacecraft, such as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, will do this work as well.

Previously: NASA Launches InSight Mission to Study the Interior of Mars
CubeSats -- En Route to Mars with InSight -- Snap Another "Pale Blue Dot" Image
NASA's MarCO CubeSats Perform Trajectory Correction Maneuvers Towards Mars

Related: NASA to Focus on Small Satellites
NASA Selects CubeSat and SmallSat Mission Concept Studies

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Mars InSight Lander on Course for Monday Touchdown

After a six-month voyage from Earth, NASA’s InSight Mars lander, streaking through space at at some 12,300 mph, will slam into the thin martian atmosphere Monday afternoon to begin a nail-biting six-and-a-half-minute descent to the surface, kicking off a billion-dollar mission to probe the red planet’s hidden interior.

“The goal of InSight is nothing less than to better understand the birth of the Earth, the birth of the planet we live on, and we’re going to do that by going to Mars,” said Principle Investigator Bruce Banerdt.

On Earth, plate tectonics and the constantly churning mantle have altered the planet’s deep interior, obscuring its history and evolution. But Mars is a smaller planet and much less active than Earth, retaining the “fingerprints” of those earlier processes.

NASA's InSight successfully lands on Mars after 'seven minutes of terror'

AnonTechie writes:

NASA's latest Mars lander, InSight, successfully touched down on the surface of the Red Planet this afternoon, surviving an intense plunge through the Martian atmosphere. It marks the eighth picture-perfect landing on Mars for NASA, adding to the space agency's impressive track record of putting spacecraft on the planet. And now, InSight's two-year mission has begun, one that entails listening for Marsquakes to learn about the world's interior.

InSight successfully lands on Mars

[Also Covered By]:

CNN

The Guardian

MARS InSight Mission

[Mission Page]: InSight Mars Lander

MarCO CubeSats Successfully Collect and Relay Data During Mars Flyby

takyon writes:

Success of Tiny Mars Probes Heralds New Era of Deep-Space Cubesats

The era of the interplanetary cubesat has definitively dawned.

Less than seven months ago, no tiny spacecraft had ever voyaged beyond Earth orbit. But two briefcase-size probes just blazed a trail all the way to Mars, covering 301 million deep-space miles (484 million kilometers) and beaming home data from NASA's InSight lander during the latter's successful touchdown on the Red Planet Monday (Nov. 26).

The tiny NASA craft, known as MarCO-A and MarCO-B, even photographed Mars and helped researchers collect some data about the planet's atmosphere during their flyby, mission team members said.

Hopefully this new era will include flybys or orbits of all the large asteroids and dwarf planets (Eris, Sedna, Makemake, Haumea, etc.)

Previously: NASA to Focus on Small Satellites
NASA Selects CubeSat and SmallSat Mission Concept Studies
NASA's InSight Mars Mission Rescheduled for 2018
NASA Launches InSight Mission to Study the Interior of Mars
CubeSats -- En Route to Mars with InSight -- Snap Another "Pale Blue Dot" Image
MarCO CubeSat Takes Image of Mars From 12.8 Million Kilometers Away
Mars InSight Lander on Course for Monday Touchdown at 2:54 PM EST (19:54 UTC)
Watch Online | Landing – NASA's InSight Mars Lander

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2