Tag: InSight

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Tiny probe snaps fresh picture of our Pale Blue Dot

Pale Blue Dot picture
The nanosatellite known as MarCO-B or Wall-E took this picture of Earth and the moon from a distance of more than 620,000 miles. (NASA / JPL-Caltech Photo)

You don’t have to fly beyond the orbit of Neptune to see our home planet as a Pale Blue Dot. One of the first nanosatellites to travel beyond Earth orbit has proven that in a new version of the view first made famous by “Cosmos” astronomer Carl Sagan.

This picture, showing Earth as a bluish speck and the moon as a faint blip, was captured by one of the two MarCO CubeSats that were launched toward Mars on May 5 as piggyback payloads for NASA’s Mars InSight mission.

Each of the MarCO (“Mars Cube One”) probes is roughly the size of a small briefcase, and stuffed with experimental equipment that will come into play during their Red Planet flyby in November.

Last week, the MarCO-B spacecraft (also known as Wall-E) snapped a picture with its wide-field color camera to check the deployment of its high-gain antenna.

The good news is that the pint-sized antenna has unfolded properly, as seen in the picture. The better news is that Earth and the moon showed up in the frame as well.

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Mars InSight lander lifts off from California

Mars Insight launch
An Atlas 5 rocket rises from its fog-shrouded launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, sending NASA’s Mars InSight lander toward the Red Planet. (GeekWire Photo/Kevin Lisota)

NASA’s Mars InSight lander and two piggyback probes were lofted through California’s coastal fog into space before dawn today, beginning a six-month, 300 million-mile journey to study the Red Planet’s mysterious interior.

It marked the first interplanetary mission to be launched from the U.S. West Coast.

The launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base was shrouded in murk when the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket lifted off at 4:05 a.m. PT. Near the pad, the typically foggy weather blocked the view, but not the sound.

“We really heard it,” NASA chief scientist Jim Green said after liftoff. “Car alarms went off in the parking lot.”

Spectators across a wide swath of the Southern California coast got a good look at the rocket’s red glare as the Atlas ascended to orbit.

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Basketball star Chris Bosh geeks out over Mars

Boshes and Atlas 5
Chris Bosh and his wife, Adrienne Bosh, pose for a selfie with an Atlas 5 rocket in advance of today’s Mars InSight launch. (Adrienne Bosh via Twitter)

While retired NBA All-Star basketball player Chris Bosh plans his next career moves, he and his wife Adrienne are taking a time out to witness the launch of NASA’s Mars InSight lander from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Based on their tweets, the Boshs are having a great time and firing up the space crowd as well. More importantly, they’re inspiring their children to reach even higher than a basketball rim.

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It’s showtime for launch of Mars InSight lander

Mars InSight lander
An artist’s impression shows the Mars InSight lander and a cutaway view of Mars’ subsurface, with the lander’s heat probe deployed underground. (NASA Illustration)

NASA’s Mars InSight lander is being prepped for a launch that will send some magical science and engineering toward the Red Planet, including two pint-sized piggyback probes and a seismometer that can measure distances less than the width of an atom.

Now, if only NASA could work its magic on the weather for May 5’s scheduled 4:05 a.m. PT liftoff from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base.

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Get a 360-degree view of Mars lander’s testbed

InSight lander
Engineers test a replica of NASA’s InSight lander as it lifts a wind shield with its robotic arm, under Mars-style illumination in a testbed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (NASA / JPL via YouTube)

When NASA’s InSight lander touches down on Mars in November, its handlers already will have had lots of practice operating its cranelike robot arm — thanks to an InSight knockoff sitting in a plot of simulated Martian grit back on Earth.

The Mars-style testbed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., is the focus of a newly released 360-degree video clip.

JPL’s scientists and engineers use the testbed, set up in a facility known as the In-Situ Instrument Lab, to simulate the terrain in which Mars probes might find themselves.

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NASA gives go-ahead for Mars lander in 2018

Image: InSight lander
An artist’s conception shows NASA’s InSight lander on Mars. The SEIS instrument is in the chamber shown to the left of the lander platform. (Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech)

NASA has approved plans to fix a flaw on its InSight lander in time for a launch to Mars in 2018.

The flaw involves a leak in a vacuum seal for one of the lander’s main scientific instruments, known as the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure or SEIS. InSight had been scheduled for launch this year, but last December, NASA put off the launch because the leak couldn’t be fixed in time.

Today NASA said it would spend an extra $153.8 million, on top of the mission’s previously budgeted $675 million, to redesign the instrument and cover other costs of the two-year delay.

“The additional cost will not delay or cancel any current missions, though there may be fewer opportunities for new missions in future years, from fiscal years 2017 to 2020,” NASA said in a statement.

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NASA has a plan to fix Mars lander for 2018

Image: Insight Mars lander
This artist’s conception shows the InSight lander on Mars. The SEIS instrument is deployed to the right of the lander, while a subsurface heat probe is buried at left. (Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech)

NASA says it’s worked out a plan to redesign a faulty instrument on its InSight lander in time to send it to Mars in 2018.

The lander had been scheduled for liftoff this month from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, but in December, mission managers said they had to scratch the launch off their schedule because they couldn’t fix the instrument in time.

InSight is designed to monitor seismic activity deep beneath Mars’ surface. The mission’s name comes from a quasi-acronym for “Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport.” Studying the Martian subsurface could provide insights into the planet’s evolution and current geological activity.

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Leak holds up NASA’s InSight launch to Mars

Image: InSight
An artist’s conception shows the InSight lander on the surface of Mars. The SEIS instrument is the light-colored dome at lower left. (Credit: NASA)

NASA says it’s putting off next year’s scheduled launch of its InSight lander mission to Mars until at least 2018, due to a persistent leak in the spacecraft’s main seismic-sensing instrument.

Mission managers had been working for months to track down a series of small leaks in the vacuum seal for the instrument, known as the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure, or SEIS. The instrument was being built and tested for NASA under the direction of France’s space agency, the Centre Nationale d’Etudes Spatiales, or CNES.

Up until Monday, managers had high hopes they could fix all the leaks in time for next March’s liftoff atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. But the results from a low-temperature vacuum test at a facility near Paris were so discouraging that they scratched the launch off the schedule.

“It’s a very close decision,” Marc Pircher, director of CNES’ Toulouse Space Center, told reporters during a teleconference.

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