Category Archives: Space Science

Mars, Space Science, Space Systems

Videos: Launch nears for the InSight mission to Mars

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The Atlas V carrying the InSight Mars lander is set to lift off on Saturday morning from Vandenberg AFB in California at 4:05 a.m. PDT (7:05 am EDT)  (See earlier posting here.) The vehicle is scheduled to land on Mars in the western Elysium Planitia region at around noon Pacific time on Monday, Nov. 26th.

Webcast coverage of the launch will start at 3:30 am PDT (6:30 EDT): NASA Live: InSight Mars Launch | NASA

A couple of reports on the mission:

More videos about InSight:

** InSight Countdown to T-Zero: From the West Coast to the Red Planet

** InSight Countdown to T-Zero, Episode 2: Into the Fairing

** A pre-launch briefing on the science of the Insight mission :

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Mars, Space Science, Space Systems

Videos: Insight Lander mission to Mars set to lift off on Saturday

A ULA Atlas V rocket is ready for launch this Saturday morning to send the Insight Lander to Mars, where it will use a seismograph and other instruments to study the interior of the Red Planet. Liftoff is set for 7:05 am EDT (4:05 am PDT, 1105 GMT). NASA TV coverage of the launch from Vandenberg AFB in California will start at 6:30 am EDT. On Thursday at 4:00 pm EDT, NASA TV will broadcast a pre-launch briefing about the mission.

InSight will be the first mission to peer deep beneath the Martian surface, studying the planet’s interior by measuring its heat output and listening for marsquakes, which are seismic events similar to earthquakes on Earth. It will use the seismic waves generated by marsquakes to develop a map of the planet’s deep interior. The resulting insight into Mars’ formation will help us better understand how other rocky planets, including Earth, were and are created.

JPL manages the InSight mission for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. InSight is part of NASA’s Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The spacecraft, including cruise stage and lander, was built and tested by Lockheed Martin Space in Denver.

Several European partners, including France’s space agency, the Centre National d’Étude Spatiales, and Germany’s DLR, are supporting the mission.

Here is an overview of the mission from NASA:

Lockheed-Martin was the lead contractor building the spacecraft:

Here is a science briefing on the mission held back in March:

The Planetary Society‘s “Planetary Post with Robert Picardo” reports from the spacecraft clean room:

More about the mission:

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Mars, Space Science, Space Systems

Mars: Update on the rovers + A sample return mission overview

Check out Bob Zimmerman’s latest update on what the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers on Mars have been up to: Mars rover update: April 27, 2018 | Behind The Black

Curiosity’s exploration of Vera Rubin Ridge is extended, while an attempt by Opportunity to climb back up Perseverance Valley to reach an interesting rock outcrop fails.

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Here is an overview of NASA JPL’s goal of one day bringing back a sample of Martian soil to earth:

 

Mars, Space Science

Videos: Mars sample return mission + “Revving up for Future Exploration of the Red Planet”

Here is a new video from NASA JPL about a plan to return a sample of Martian soil to the earth:

And here is a video of a recent public lecture at the SETI Institute giving an overview of Mars research plans:

Three SETI Institute planetary scientists who have dedicated their career to the study of the red planet will tell us what we have learned from those studies, and what the next steps are in the exploration of Mars with the next generation of rovers. Janice Bishop will introduce the candidate landing sites for upcoming martian rovers. She will focus on the mineralogy determined from the CRISM spectrometer at Mars and what that can tell us about Mars’ early environment. Ginny Gulick will describe the fluvial morphology/water history of these sites as seen by the HiRISE and CTX cameras. Finally, Pablo Sobron will address the instruments scheduled for the Mars2020 and ExoMars rovers and how SuperCam, Sherlock and the ExoMars Raman/LIBS instrument will be used to explore mineralogy and organics at the future landing sites.

 

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Asteroids & Comets, Astronomy, Space Science

New animation of Rosetta images shows a wild time on Comet 67P

In 2014 the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe went into orbit around  Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko and spent a couple of years studying it.  Jacint Roger Perez combined a series of 33 images made during a 25 minute period as the probe flew about 13 kilometers from the comet and the resulting time lapse creates the dramatic scene below:

Gif animation created by Jacint Roger Perez from Rosetta images of Comet 67P.

Although it looks like a blizzard, the white dots and streaks are a mix of stars in the dark background plus dust and ice particles,  as well as radiation going through the imager. The comet’s surface at the time was stirred up from the heat of the sun.

More about the animation and the Rossetta mission:

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