Tag Archives: InSight

Astronomy News

Digging deep into Mars

From Astronomy Magazine

Digging deep into Mars

Although dozens of spacecraft have explored Mars’ surface, InSight is the first to target the planet’s interior.
By Jim Bell  |  Published: Tuesday, September 10, 2019
RELATED TOPICS: MARS | INSIGHT
InSight Selfie
InSight took this selfie December 6, 2018, with its Instrument Deployment Camera. The probe’s two solar panels dominate the scene, with the deck and its science instruments, weather sensor booms, and UHF antenna between them. The camera, which resides on the elbow of the spacecraft’s robotic arm, took 11 images that scientists on Earth stitched together to create this mosaic. All photos by NASA/JPL-Caltech unless otherwise noted
Is Mars a dead world like the Moon, or an active, living terrestrial planet like Earth? That’s the $830 million question that an international team of scientists and engineers are trying to answer with the latest robotic inhabitant of the Red Planet.
NASA selected the InSight mission in 2012 from a pool of nearly 30 proposals for exploring the solar system that had been submitted to the space agency’s Discovery program competition two years earlier. InSight — short for “Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport” — is, as the name implies, a mission designed to study the deep interior of Mars from the vantage point of a single station on the surface.

Astronomy News

Mars landing

Seriously, who stays awake nights thinking up these names so they can get a significant-sounding acronym?

Mars Insight  stand for: Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport

After a safe landing, NASA’s first dedicated geophysical mission to Mars will spend the next two years studying the deep interior of the Red Planet. 

Mars Insight

Welcome to Elysium Planitia. An image taken by Insight’s Instrument Deployment Camera shortly after landing, showing the lander deck and the horizon beyond.
NASA / JPL-Caltech


After “seven minutes of terror,” and a seven-month journey of almost 300 million miles (500 million kilometers), NASA’s Mars Insight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) lander went from over 12,000 mph to zero, for NASA’s eighth successful landing on the Red Planet.

“This accomplishment represents the ingenuity of America and our international partners and it serves as a testament to the dedication and perseverance of our team,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine in a November 26th press release.

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Astronomy News

NASA suspends InSight mission to Mars

Unable to fix a leak with the mission’s main science instrument in time to make the 2016 launch window, NASA must wait two years to try again.

“The JPL and CNES teams and their partners have made a heroic effort to prepare the InSight instrument, but have run out of time given the celestial mechanics of a launch to Mars,” said JPL Director Charles Elachi. “It is more important to do it right than take an unacceptable risk.”
Read more from the Astronomy website.
Read more from Sky and Telescope.
Or if you are really, really into Mars missions, pop over to the NASA site.