InSight flew to Mars, it remains to wait for the arrival of the apparatus
This Saturday, May 5th, NASA
sent the InSight research and development apparatus
to Mars . His main task is to study the Martian rocks at the depth available for the drill. To roll on the surface of the Red Planet, like Opportunity or Curiosity, this device will not, it must remain in place. Nevertheless, its scientific value is not lower, and possibly higher than that of rovers, who are already romping over Mars.
Interestingly, since 2008, Insigth was the first landing module for NASA, sent to a neighbor of the Earth. If everything goes as planned, the system will reach Mars on November 26th. After she sits on the planet, a test of scientific instruments will start. If everything is good with them, the seismometer and the thermal probe will immediately begin their work. These two tools will allow you to create a local thermal map of the planet, as well as to find out what are marshakes.
InSight was launched two years late. The launch of the device was to take place in March 2016, but it turned out that its main scientific instrument, the SEIS seismometer, is faulty. For this reason, the agency canceled the launch and took up a solution to the problem.
When the seismometer went through a routine check after fixing technical problems, the agency planned a new launch date. This time the unit went to Mars on schedule. Traditionally, scientists and engineers were afraid of the first stage of the mission - launching the system into space on a launch vehicle. This is the most dangerous stage, because failure can eliminate all further stages and the entire mission as a whole. But everything went well, and the Atlas V booster did its job. The weather conditions at the time of launch were quite difficult - a dense fog at the launch site, but the project team decided to launch a rocket and a vehicle.
This mission is also unique because the launch was carried out from the Vanderberg base, which is located in Santa Barbara County, California, USA. No interplanetary mission began here, so the initiative was made on Saturday.
If the device weighed a couple of tons, it would have to change both the launch site and the launch vehicle. But the mass of the system is only 721 kg, so Atlas V coped with this load, sending the Lender along the correct path to the Red Planet. If something went wrong, the project team would have time before June 8 of this year - the launch window was quite wide, although, fortunately, everything was done the first time.
The last time the agency tried to land the device on Mars, everything went smoothly. Then, in 2011, NASA sent the Curiosity rover to its neighbor Earth. The rover was descending on the "sky crane", the so-called rover landing system was weighing about 1 ton. As for the Lender, it will descend with the help of a combined system of parachutes and rocket engines (a total of 12). The speed of entry into the atmosphere will be 6.3 km / s.
The duration of the scientific mission of the rover should be about two years - this is according to plan. It is possible that scientists will extend the mission if the device will function normally. Full work is scheduled for the 17th week after the descent.
The main functional part of the lender is a seismometer. It is in a sealed capsule. If the seismometer would not be closed, then the instrument readings would be incorrect due to the movement of the air masses of Mars. The atmosphere on the Red Planet, although sparse, is quite capable of causing the ultra-precise instrument to vibrate, which would affect the correctness of the readings. It was precisely the tightness was a problem discovered by the scientist in 2015 - then the experts found a leak in the shell of the case, which was supposed to be completely sealed.
Any mission where it is planned to send a scientific system to another planet is extremely complex. It requires a lot of engineering, administrative, scientific work. Hundreds of thousands of man-hours and tens and hundreds of millions of dollars - this is the price that humanity pays for scientific knowledge.
But this is nothing compared to the information that a person can get. Scientists hope that the data sent to Earth by Lender will clarify the origin of the solar system and its planets. Now there are several theories that deserve attention, and each has its advantages and disadvantages. In order to find out exactly what happened billions of years ago, you need to continue exploring space.