On the evening of November 26, 2018, NASA’s InSight research boarding module, having covered 458 million kilometers in nearly 7 months of flight, successfully landed on Mars in the highland region of Elysium and had already transferred the first image. The goal of the two-year mission will be the study of the depths of the Red Planet, which will help to know how celestial bodies with stony surfaces, including the Earth and the Moon, were formed. InSight also delivered a chip with 826,923 names of people from all over the world to Mars.
Today we successfully landed on Mars for the eighth time in the history of mankind. This achievement is a testament to the dedication and perseverance of our team.
-Jim Brydenstein, director of NASA
Seismology has already revealed some of the secrets of our planet. But the active geology of the Earth billions of years destroyed traces of ancient history, and Mars is much less active and, according to planetary scientists, still keeps the history of its formation. InSight will study the bowels of the Red Planet during every Martian earthquake.
According to the estimates of the mission team, in two years the device will see from several tens to several hundreds of such events. In addition, small meteorites, regularly penetrating the thin Martian atmosphere and crashing into the surface, will also allow him to conduct seismic observations.
The signal for a successful landing was transmitted to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory through one of two small NASA experimental Mars Cube One experimental cubes, which went to the Red Planet together with the landing module. These are the first small-sized satellites to conquer deep space.
Each landing on Mars is difficult, and now with the help of“ InSight ”we will get unique information about the Red Planet. Experimental Cubsat also opened a new era of small interplanetary spacecraft. The success of these two unique missions is the result of the well-coordinated work of hundreds of talented engineers and scientists who have put all their knowledge and strength on the way to this great moment.
-Michael Watkins, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
The first scientific data of InSight will begin collecting already during the first week after landing, however, at the moment, the mission team is mainly focused on preparing the landing module tools, including a 1.8 meter robotic arm, which in the coming days will begin shooting the Martian landscape. Within two or three months, transferring images to Earth and in response receiving commands from the mission center, the hand will deploy the main scientific tools of InSight.
Why is NASA’s InSight looking for Martian earthquakes?
Thanks to a design inspired by the older Phoenix Mars landing gear, this next-generation ship will use a robotic arm to place a seismometer on the surface of Mars, a device that records earthquakes. If all goes well for two years (one Martian year), he will listen to the vibrations that occur below the surface of the planet in order to answer some fundamental questions about how the planets were formed, including our own.
Martian earthquakes, like earthquakes on Earth, are vibrations that move around the planet. But how these earthquakes form on the Red Planet can be fundamentally different from how they are formed on Earth. And it turns out that these differences can help scientists better understand what the early Earth looks like.
For the most part, earthquakes on our planet are due to plate tectonics, which occur when the plates that make up the outer shell of the Earth slide along the mantle. These tectonic plates are constantly moving at a speed of about 5-10 centimeters a year – they stumble and slip past each other. Sometimes, when a plate moves past another plate, its grungy edge gets stuck and stops while the rest of the plate continues to move. As this part of the plate is stuck, it accumulates the energy that it normally uses to move, and, eventually straightening, releases all the stored energy in the form of seismic waves that cause an earthquake.
But Mars does not have a fragmented outer shell, such as the Earth. It turns out that earthquakes cannot be fixed on Mars? It turned out that other phenomena can cause seismic waves, such as stress on a slightly shrunken surface caused by planetary cooling, magma pressure, a nudging surface, and even a meteorite.
But these vibrations, in comparison with the Earth, are very small.
What we are trying to measure is such vibrations that are so small that they are similar to the size of an atom.
-Bruce Banerdt, principal researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, at a press conference
Different materials underground reflect seismic waves in different ways, and from these differences, scientists will be able to determine the composition of the interior of Mars.
We can assemble a three-dimensional map of Mars.
The earth is so active that the evidence of all these processes is largely obliterated by plate tectonics.
-Banderdt
While the early history of Earth was erased due to the constant movement of the layers of the crust, Mars still retained its fingerprints.
Therefore, looking at the seismic waves inside our planet, we cannot tell about how it was formed. Since all the rocky planets formed the same way, and then radically changed over billions of years.
Looking at Mars, we could talk about how our own planet was formed.
-Banderdt
According to NASA, InSight also has the tools to obtain characteristics such as measuring the temperature inside Mars and tracking vibrations to identify the composition and size of the metal core of the planet.
Received second image from InSight from the surface of Mars
The Instrument Deployment Camera (IDC), mounted on the NASA InSight robotized arm of the Mars module and designed to control the deployment of scientific instruments, made the first for itself and the second after the Instrument Context Camera (ICC) camera of Mars. In addition to the photo, InSight conveyed information that its solar panels were successfully deployed.
Image taken November 26, 2018 a few hours after landing InSight on the Red Planet. The snapshot and data were sent to Earth via the NASA Mars Odyssey spacecraft, which since 2001 has been in Mars.
On the evening of November 26, 2018, NASA’s InSight research boarding module, having covered 458 million kilometers in almost 7 months of its flight, landed successfully on Mars in the area of the Elysian Highland. The goal of the two-year mission will be the study of the depths of the Red Planet, which will help to learn how celestial bodies with stony surfaces were formed.
NASA's InSight module news
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