The Latest Discovery by a Mars Lander That Permanently Fell Silent Years Ago...

NASA / JPL - Caltech

NASA Marsquake Data Reveals Lumpy Nature of Red Planet’s Interior (News Release)

Rocky material that impacted Mars lies scattered in giant lumps throughout the planet’s mantle, offering clues about Mars’ interior and its ancient past.

What appear to be fragments from the aftermath of massive impacts on Mars that occurred 4.5 billion years ago have been detected deep below the planet’s surface. The discovery was made thanks to NASA’s now-retired InSight lander, which recorded the findings before the mission’s end in 2022. The ancient impacts released enough energy to melt continent-size swaths of the early crust and mantle into vast magma oceans, simultaneously injecting the impactor fragments and Martian debris deep into the planet’s interior.

There’s no way to tell exactly what struck Mars: The early Solar System was filled with a range of different rocky objects that could have done so, including some so large they were effectively protoplanets. The remains of these impacts still exist in the form of lumps that are as large as 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) across and scattered throughout the Martian mantle. They offer a record preserved only on worlds like Mars, whose lack of tectonic plates has kept its interior from being churned up the way Earth’s is through a process known as convection.

The finding was reported on Thursday, August 28, in a study published by the journal Science.

“We’ve never seen the inside of a planet in such fine detail and clarity before,” said the paper’s lead author, Constantinos Charalambous of Imperial College London. “What we’re seeing is a mantle studded with ancient fragments. Their survival to this day tells us Mars’ mantle has evolved sluggishly over billions of years. On Earth, features like these may well have been largely erased.”

InSight, which was managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, placed the first seismometer on Mars’ surface in 2018. The extremely-sensitive instrument recorded 1,319 marsquakes before the lander’s end of mission in 2022.

Quakes produce seismic waves that change as they pass through different kinds of material, providing scientists a way to study the interior of a planetary body. To date, the InSight team has measured the size, depth and composition of Mars’ crust, mantle and core. This latest discovery regarding the mantle’s composition suggests how much is still waiting to be discovered within InSight’s data.

“We knew Mars was a time capsule bearing records of its early formation, but we didn’t anticipate just how clearly we’d be able to see with InSight,” said Tom Pike of Imperial College London, coauthor of the paper.

Quake hunting

Mars lacks the tectonic plates that produce the temblors many people in seismically-active areas are familiar with. But there are two other types of quakes on Earth that also occur on Mars: those caused by rocks cracking under heat and pressure, and those caused by meteoroid impacts.

Of the two types, meteoroid impacts on Mars produce high-frequency seismic waves that travel from the crust deep into the planet’s mantle, according to a paper published earlier this year in Geophysical Research Letters. Located beneath the planet’s crust, the Martian mantle can be as much as 960 miles (1,550 kilometers) thick and is made of solid rock that can reach temperatures as high as 2,732° Fahrenheit (1,500° Celsius).

Scrambled signals

The new Science paper identifies eight marsquakes whose seismic waves contained strong, high-frequency energy that reached deep into the mantle, where their seismic waves were distinctly altered.

“When we first saw this in our quake data, we thought the slowdowns were happening in the Martian crust,” Pike said. “But then we noticed that the farther seismic waves travel through the mantle, the more these high-frequency signals were being delayed.”

Using planetwide computer simulations, the team saw that the slowing down and scrambling happened only when the signals passed through small, localized regions within the mantle. They also determined that these regions appear to be lumps of material with a different composition than the surrounding mantle.

With one riddle solved, the team focused on another: how those lumps got there.

Turning back the clock, they concluded that the lumps likely arrived as giant asteroids or other rocky material that struck Mars during the early Solar System, generating those oceans of magma as they drove deep into the mantle, bringing with them fragments of crust and mantle.

Charalambous likens the pattern to shattered glass — a few large shards with many smaller fragments. The pattern is consistent with a large release of energy that scattered many fragments of material throughout the mantle. It also fits well with current thinking that in the early Solar System, asteroids and other planetary bodies regularly bombarded the young planets.

On Earth, the crust and uppermost mantle is continuously recycled by plate tectonics pushing a plate’s edge into the hot interior, where, through convection, hotter, less-dense material rises and cooler, denser material sinks. Mars, by contrast, lacks tectonic plates, and its interior circulates far more sluggishly. The fact that such fine structures are still visible today, Charalambous said, “tells us Mars hasn’t undergone the vigorous churning that would have smoothed out these lumps.”

And in that way, Mars could point to what may be lurking beneath the surface of other rocky planets that lack plate tectonics, including Venus and Mercury.

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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NASA / JPL - Caltech

A Mars Lander Continues to Make Discoveries Years After It Permanently Fell Silent...

NASA / JPL - Caltech / University of Arizona

NASA’s InSight Finds Marsquakes From Meteoroids Go Deeper Than Expected (News Release - February 3)

With help from AI, scientists discovered a fresh crater made by an impact that shook material as deep as the Red Planet’s mantle.

Meteoroids striking Mars produce seismic signals that can reach deeper into the planet than previously known. That’s the finding of a pair of new papers comparing marsquake data collected by NASA’s InSight lander with impact craters spotted by the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The papers, published on Monday, February 3, in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), highlight how scientists continue to learn from InSight, which NASA retired in 2022 after a successful extended mission. InSight set the first seismometer on Mars, detecting more than 1,300 marsquakes, which are produced by shaking deep inside the planet (caused by rocks cracking under heat and pressure) and by space rocks striking the surface.

By observing how seismic waves from those quakes change as they travel through the planet’s crust, mantle and core, scientists get a glimpse into Mars’ interior, as well as a better understanding of how all rocky worlds form, including Earth and its Moon.

Researchers have in the past taken images of new impact craters and found seismic data that matches the date and location of the craters’ formation. But the two new studies represent the first time that a fresh impact has been correlated with shaking detected in Cerberus Fossae, an especially quake-prone region of Mars that is 1,019 miles (1,640 kilometers) from InSight.

The impact crater is 71 feet (21.5 meters) in diameter and much farther from InSight than scientists expected, based on the quake’s seismic energy. The Martian crust has unique properties thought to dampen seismic waves produced by impacts, and researchers’ analysis of the Cerberus Fossae impact led them to conclude that the waves it produced took a more direct route through the planet’s mantle.

InSight’s team will now have to reassess their models of the composition and structure of Mars’ interior to explain how impact-generated seismic signals can go that deep.

“We used to think the energy detected from the vast majority of seismic events was stuck traveling within the Martian crust,” said InSight team member Constantinos Charalambous of Imperial College London. “This finding shows a deeper, faster path — call it a seismic highway — through the mantle, allowing quakes to reach more distant regions of the planet.”

Spotting Mars Craters With MRO

A machine-learning algorithm developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to detect meteoroid impacts on Mars played a key role in discovering the Cerberus Fossae crater. In a matter of hours, the artificial intelligence tool can sift through tens of thousands of black-and-white images captured by MRO’s Context Camera, detecting the blast zones around craters. The tool selects candidate images for examination by scientists practiced at telling which subtle colorations on Mars deserve more detailed imaging by MRO’s High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera.

“Done manually, this would be years of work,” said InSight team member Valentin Bickel of the University of Bern in Switzerland. “Using this tool, we went from tens of thousands of images to just a handful in a matter of days. It’s not quite as good as a human, but it’s super fast.”

Bickel and his colleagues searched for craters within roughly 1,864 miles (3,000 kilometers) of InSight’s location, hoping to find some that formed while the lander’s seismometer was recording. By comparing before-and-after images from the Context Camera over a range of time, they found 123 fresh craters to cross-reference with InSight’s data; 49 of those were potential matches with quakes detected by the lander’s seismometer. Charalambous and other seismologists filtered that pool further to identify the 71-foot Cerberus Fossae impact crater.

Deciphering More, Faster

The more scientists study InSight’s data, the better they become at distinguishing signals originating inside the planet from those caused by meteoroid strikes. The impact found in Cerberus Fossae will help them further refine how they tell these signals apart.

“We thought Cerberus Fossae produced lots of high-frequency seismic signals associated with internally-generated quakes, but this suggests some of the activity does not originate there and could actually be from impacts instead,” Charalambous said.

The findings also highlight how researchers are harnessing AI to improve planetary science by making better use of all the data gathered by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) missions. In addition to studying Martian craters, Bickel has used AI to search for landslides, dust devils and seasonal dark features that appear on steep slopes, called slope streaks or recurring slope linae. AI tools have been used to find craters and landslides on Earth’s Moon as well.

“Now we have so many images from the Moon and Mars that the struggle is to process and analyze the data,” Bickel said. “We’ve finally arrived in the big data era of planetary science.”

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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NASA / JPL - Caltech

Fly Your Name Aboard VIPER to the Lunar Surface!

NASA Ames / Daniel Rutter

NASA Invites Public to Send Names Aboard Artemis Robotic Moon Rover (Press Release)

NASA is inviting people to send their names to the surface of the Moon aboard the agency’s first robotic lunar rover, VIPER – short for Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover. The rover will embark on a mission to the lunar South Pole to unravel the mysteries of the Moon’s water and better understand the environment where NASA plans to land the first woman and first person of color under its Artemis program.

As part of the Send Your Name with VIPER campaign, NASA will accept names received before 11:59 p.m. EST on March 15. Once collected, the agency will take the names and attach them to the rover.

To add your name, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/send-your-name-with-viper

The site also enables participants to create and download a virtual souvenir – a boarding pass to the VIPER mission featuring their name – to commemorate the experience. Participants are encouraged to share their requests on social media using the hashtag #SendYourName.

“With VIPER, we are going to study and explore parts of the Moon’s surface no one has ever been to before – and with this campaign, we are inviting the world to be part of that risky yet rewarding journey,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Just think: Our names will ride along as VIPER navigates across the rugged terrain of the lunar South Pole and gathers valuable data that will help us better understand the history of the Moon and the environment where we plan to send Artemis astronauts.”

This campaign is like other NASA projects that have enabled tens of millions of people to send their names to ride along with Artemis I, several Mars spacecraft, and the agency’s upcoming Europa Clipper mission. It draws from the agency’s long tradition of shipping inspirational messages on spacecraft that have explored our solar system and beyond.

“Our VIPER is a game-changer,” said Daniel Andrews, VIPER’s project manager at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. “It’s the first mission of its kind, expanding our understanding of where lunar resources could be harvested to support a long-term human presence on the Moon.”

In late 2024, Astrobotic Technologies’ Griffin Mission One is scheduled to deliver VIPER to the lunar surface after launching aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Once there, VIPER will rely on its solar panels and batteries for its roughly 100-day mission to survive extreme temperatures and challenging lighting conditions, while powering a suite of science instruments designed to gather data about the characteristics and concentrations of lunar ice and other possible resources.

NASA’s VIPER delivery is part of its CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative under the Artemis program. With CLPS, as well as with human exploration near the lunar South Pole, NASA will establish a long-term cadence of Moon missions in preparation for sending the first astronauts to Mars.

The rover is part of the LDEP (Lunar Discovery and Exploration Program), managed by the Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters and is executed through the Exploration Science Strategy and Integration Office. In addition to managing the mission, NASA Ames leads the mission’s science, systems engineering, real-time rover surface operations and flight software.

The rover hardware is designed and built by NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, while the instruments are provided by NASA Ames, the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and commercial partner Honeybee Robotics in Altadena, California.

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On This Day in 2018: The InSight Lander Safely Touches Down on Mars...

NASA / JPL - Caltech

It was five years ago today that InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport)—NASA's successor to the Phoenix spacecraft that safely landed on Mars back in 2008—triumphantly touched down on the Red Planet.

InSight's goal for its mission, which began with a launch from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base over six months earlier (on May 5), was to study the Martian interior using two primary instruments: a seismometer (the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure, or SEIS) and a heat probe (the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package, or HP₃). HP₃, sadly, didn't accomplish its mission due to it being unable to penetrate the surprisingly-sticky soil at InSight's landing site.

SEIS, on the other hand, detected up to 1,300-plus marsquakes during its prolific, 4-year-long mission!

As shown below, it was an honor to have a virtual presence on InSight...along with other successful robotic Mars explorers like Phoenix as well as the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers. I've also submitted my name to fly on the Mars Sample Return mission, though it remains to be seen when this one will launch!

Happy Sunday.


NASA / JPL - Caltech

JPL Continues Developmental Testing for the Mars Sample Return Mission...

NASA / JPL - Caltech

Watch NASA Engineers Put a Mars Lander’s Legs to the Test (News Release)

Sturdy legs are needed to absorb the impact of the heaviest spacecraft to ever touch down on the Red Planet.

NASA’s Perseverance rover continues to rack up tubes filled with rock core samples for the planned Mars Sample Return campaign. The joint effort by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) seeks to bring scientifically-selected samples back from Mars to be studied on Earth with lab equipment far more complex than could be brought to the Red Planet.

Engineers are busy designing the Sample Retrieval Lander that would help bring those samples to Earth. As part of that effort, they’ve been testing prototypes of the lander’s legs and footpads at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

NASA is taking what it has learned over decades of successful Mars landings and applying those lessons to the Sample Retrieval Lander concept, which would be the largest spacecraft yet to land on Mars – as much as 5,016 pounds (2,275 kilograms). Along with relying on next-generation parachutes and 12 rocket engines to slow the spacecraft’s descent to Mars, the lander would need its legs to help absorb the impact of touchdown.

The spacecraft would carry a rocket that would launch Perseverance’s carefully-packaged samples to an awaiting orbiter. An 8-foot (2.5-meter) robotic arm, to be provided by ESA, would load those sample tubes into the rocket.

The lander could carry up to two mini-helicopters to serve as backups to retrieve tubes deposited in a sample depot. So the lander needs to be hefty.

To understand how energy would be absorbed during landing, JPL engineers conducted drop tests earlier this year that will inform the design and subsequent tests. One series of tests involved dropping a three-eighths scale early-concept lander model onto a hard floor, while the other centered on slamming a full-size footpad into simulated Martian soil.

The team can apply what they observe during testing as they refine the design.

Starting Small

“There’s already a night-and-day difference between this lander and the design we started with,” said Morgan Montalvo, a JPL engineer working on the tests.

The team has to think of every possible landing scenario, including what would happen if the spacecraft touched down at an angle and “stubbed a toe” on a rock. To try and create such a challenge during one series of tests, they dangled a prototype from a pendulum that sent the mini-lander to the ground at an angle.

Cameras on tripods ringed the landing surface, a large black metal plate on the floor. A low guardrail doubled as the rock.

Montalvo called out a 3-2-1 countdown, and the lander swooped down with a bang, slamming into the guardrail. When the team studied the high-speed video later, they were surprised to find a perceptible wobble in one of the leg’s main struts.

Increase the lander’s size, and this wobble would be even more noticeable. In response, stronger flight struts will be designed to handle those forces.

The team has also tested the lander’s “load limiters” – steel rods connecting its chassis to its legs. When the legs move during touchdown, the rods are forced to bend, absorbing some impact.

The limiters were used on past landers like InSight, but they’re bigger on this prototype and will be even bigger on the final design.

“You’d never be able to bend these steel rods with just your hands,” Montalvo said. “It’s pretty insane seeing just how much force goes into them, bending them nearly in half after a drop.”

Heavy-Footed Spacecraft

Testing of the lander’s full-size foot pads has been taking place in a box filled with 10,000 pounds (4,536 kilograms) of powdery, Mars-like soil. About 16 inches (41 centimeters) in diameter, the flat, round footpad attaches to an assembly with nearly a half-ton of iron weight plates.

Patrick DeGrosse, the test bed lead, kept watch during one test as the lander foot plunged into the soil, leaving a deep indentation while tossing a cloud of dust. The impact shook the walls of the building.

Afterward, high-speed cameras showed how energy radiated out from the pad.

“We don’t want the lander’s feet to sink so far that the bottom of the lander hits the surface,” DeGrosse said. “And we want to make sure the lander is very even on the surface. It needs to be sturdy, because the lander is also a platform for the rocket to lift off from.”

After each test, DeGrosse rebuilds the soil bed 4 inches at a time, tamping down the material to make sure it’s compressed the way scientists expect it to be on Mars. The conditions also need to be consistent for the team to understand how the footpad interacts with the soil.

So DeGrosse repeats this time-consuming process four times a month. “You have to rebuild Mars multiple times to do this test,” he said.

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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Even with Its Mission Ended, Phoenix's Successor Continues to Make New Discoveries About the Red Planet...

NASA / JPL - Caltech

NASA InSight Study Finds Mars Is Spinning Faster (News Release)

Data sent by the spacecraft before it retired last December has provided new details about how fast the planet rotates and how much it wobbles.

Scientists have made the most precise measurements ever of Mars’ rotation, for the first time detecting how the planet wobbles due to the “sloshing” of its molten metal core. The findings, detailed in a recent Nature paper, rely on data from NASA’s InSight Mars lander, which operated for four years before running out of power during its extended mission in December 2022.

To track the planet’s spin rate, the study’s authors relied on one of InSight’s instruments: a radio transponder and antennas collectively called the Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment, or RISE. They found that the planet’s rotation is accelerating by about 4 milliarcseconds per year² – corresponding to a shortening of the length of the Martian day by a fraction of a millisecond per year.

It’s a subtle acceleration, and scientists aren’t entirely sure of the cause. But they have a few ideas, including ice accumulating on the polar caps or post-glacial rebound, where landmasses rise after being buried by ice.

The shift in a planet’s mass can cause it to accelerate a bit like an ice skater spinning with their arms stretched out, then pulling their arms in.

“It’s really cool to be able to get this latest measurement – and so precisely,” said InSight’s principal investigator, Bruce Banerdt of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “I’ve been involved in efforts to get a geophysical station like InSight onto Mars for a long time, and results like this make all those decades of work worth it.”

How RISE Works

RISE is part of a long tradition of Mars landers using radio waves for science, including the twin Viking landers in the 1970s and the Pathfinder lander in the late ’90s. But none of those missions had the advantage of InSight’s advanced radio technology and upgrades to the antennas within NASA’s Deep Space Network on Earth.

Together, these enhancements provided data about five times more accurate than what was available for the Viking landers.

In the case of InSight, scientists would beam a radio signal to the lander using the Deep Space Network. RISE would then reflect the signal back.

When scientists received the reflected signal, they would look for tiny changes in frequency caused by the Doppler shift (the same effect that causes an ambulance siren to change pitch as it gets closer and farther away). Measuring the shift enabled researchers to determine how fast the planet rotates.

“What we’re looking for are variations that are just a few tens of centimeters over the course of a Martian year,” said the paper’s lead author and RISE’s principal investigator, Sebastien Le Maistre at the Royal Observatory of Belgium. “It takes a very long time and a lot of data to accumulate before we can even see these variations.”

The paper examined data from InSight’s first 900 Martian days – enough time to look for such variations.

Scientists had their work cut out for them to eliminate sources of noise: Water slows radio signals, so moisture in the Earth’s atmosphere can distort the signal coming back from Mars. So can the solar wind, the electrons and protons flung into deep space from the Sun.

“It’s a historic experiment,” said Le Maistre. “We have spent a lot of time and energy preparing for the experiment and anticipating these discoveries. But despite this, we were still surprised along the way – and it’s not over, since RISE still has a lot to reveal about Mars.”

Martian Core Measurements

RISE data was also used by the study authors to measure Mars’ wobble – called its nutation – due to sloshing in its liquid core. The measurement allows scientists to determine the size of the core: Based on RISE data, the core has a radius of roughly 1,140 miles (1,835 kilometers).

The authors then compared that figure with two previous measurements of the core derived from the spacecraft’s seismometer. Specifically, they looked at how seismic waves traveled through the planet’s interior – whether they reflected off the core or passed through it unimpeded.

Taking all three measurements into account, they estimate the core’s radius to be between 1,112 and 1,150 miles (1,790 and 1,850 kilometers). Mars as a whole has a radius of 2,106 miles (3,390 kilometers) – about half the size of Earth’s.

Measuring Mars wobble also provided details about the shape of the core.

“RISE’s data indicate the core’s shape cannot be explained by its rotation alone,” said the paper’s second author, Attilio Rivoldini of the Royal Observatory of Belgium. “That shape requires regions of slightly higher or lower density buried deep within the mantle.”

While scientists will be mining InSight data for years to come, this study marks the final chapter for Banerdt’s role as the mission’s principal investigator. After 46 years with JPL, he retired on August 1.

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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Another Robotic Emissary Launched by Humanity Has Fallen Silent on the Red Planet...

NASA / JPL - Caltech

NASA Retires InSight Mars Lander Mission After Years of Science (Press Release)

NASA’s InSight mission has ended after more than four years of collecting unique science on Mars. Mission controllers at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California were unable to contact the lander after two consecutive attempts, leading them to conclude the spacecraft’s solar-powered batteries have run out of energy – a state engineers refer to as “dead bus.”

NASA had previously decided to declare the mission over if the lander missed two communication attempts. The agency will continue to listen for a signal from the lander, just in case, but hearing from it at this point is considered unlikely.

The last time InSight communicated with Earth was December 15.

“I watched the launch and landing of this mission, and while saying goodbye to a spacecraft is always sad, the fascinating science InSight conducted is cause for celebration,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “The seismic data alone from this Discovery Program mission offers tremendous insights not just into Mars but other rocky bodies, including Earth.”

Short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, InSight set out to study the deep interior of Mars. The lander data has yielded details about Mars’ interior layers, the surprisingly strong remnants beneath the surface of its extinct magnetic dynamo, weather on this part of Mars, and lots of quake activity.

Its highly sensitive seismometer, along with daily monitoring performed by the French space agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and the Marsquake Service managed by ETH Zurich, detected 1,319 marsquakes, including quakes caused by meteoroid impacts, the largest of which unearthed boulder-size chunks of ice late last year.

Such impacts help scientists determine the age of the planet’s surface, and data from the seismometer provides scientists a way to study the planet’s crust, mantle and core.

“With InSight, seismology was the focus of a mission beyond Earth for the first time since the Apollo missions, when astronauts brought seismometers to the Moon,” said Philippe Lognonné of Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, principal investigator of InSight’s seismometer. “We broke new ground, and our science team can be proud of all that we’ve learned along the way.”

The seismometer was the last science instrument that remained powered on as dust accumulating on the lander’s solar panels gradually reduced its energy, a process that began before NASA extended the mission earlier this year.

“InSight has more than lived up to its name. As a scientist who’s spent a career studying Mars, it’s been a thrill to see what the lander has achieved, thanks to an entire team of people across the globe who helped make this mission a success,” said Laurie Leshin, director of JPL, which manages the mission. “Yes, it’s sad to say goodbye, but InSight’s legacy will live on, informing and inspiring.”

All Mars missions face challenges, and InSight was no different. The lander featured a self-hammering spike – nicknamed “the mole” – that was intended to dig 16 feet (5 meters) down, trailing a sensor-laden tether that would measure heat within the planet, enabling scientists to calculate how much energy was left over from Mars’ formation.

Designed for the loose, sandy soil seen on other missions, the mole could not gain traction in the unexpectedly clumpy soil around InSight. The instrument, which was provided by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), eventually buried its 16-inch (40-centimeter) probe just slightly below the surface, collecting valuable data on the physical and thermal properties of the Martian soil along the way.

This is useful for any future human or robotic missions that attempt to dig underground.

The mission buried the mole to the extent possible thanks to engineers at JPL and DLR using the lander’s robotic arm in inventive ways. Primarily intended to set science instruments on the Martian surface, the arm and its small scoop also helped remove dust from InSight’s solar panels as power began to diminish.

Counterintuitively, the mission determined they could sprinkle dirt from the scoop onto the panels during windy days, allowing the falling granules to gently sweep dust off the panels.

“We’ve thought of InSight as our friend and colleague on Mars for the past four years, so it’s hard to say goodbye,” said Bruce Banerdt of JPL, the mission’s principal investigator. “But it has earned its richly-deserved retirement.”

JPL manages InSight for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA’s Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supports spacecraft operations for the mission.

Several European partners, including France’s CNES and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris).

Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP₃) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland.

Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors.

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My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send. Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will – but I’ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me. pic.twitter.com/wkYKww15kQ

— NASA InSight (@NASAInSight) December 19, 2022

InSight Update: The Lander Will Soon Fall Silent on the Martian Surface After a Successful 4-Year Mission...

NASA / JPL - Caltech

NASA Prepares to Say ‘Farewell’ to InSight Spacecraft (News Release - November 1)

A closer look at what goes into wrapping up the mission as the spacecraft’s power supply continues to dwindle.

The day is approaching when NASA’s InSight Mars lander will fall silent, ending its history-making mission to reveal secrets of the Red Planet’s interior. The spacecraft’s power generation continues to decline as windblown dust on its solar panels thickens, so the team has taken steps to continue as long as possible with what power remains. The end is expected to come in the next few weeks.

But even as the tightknit 25-to-30-member operations team – a small group compared to other Mars missions – continues to squeeze the most that they can out of InSight (short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport), they’ve also begun taking steps to wind down the mission.

Here’s a glimpse of what that looks like:

Preserving Data

The most important of the final steps with the InSight mission is storing its trove of data and making it accessible to researchers around the world. The lander data has yielded details about Mars’ interior layers, its liquid core, the surprisingly variable remnants beneath the surface of its mostly-extinct magnetic field, weather on this part of Mars, and lots of quake activity.

InSight’s seismometer, provided by France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), has detected more than 1,300 marsquakes since the lander touched down in November 2018; the largest measuring a magnitude 5. It even recorded quakes from meteoroid impacts. Observing how the seismic waves from those quakes change as they travel through the planet offers an invaluable glimpse into Mars’ interior but also provides a better understanding of how all rocky worlds, including Earth and its Moon, form.

“Finally, we can see Mars as a planet with layers, with different thicknesses, compositions,” said Bruce Banerdt of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the mission’s principal investigator. “We’re starting to really tease out the details. Now it’s not just this enigma; it’s actually a living, breathing planet.”

The seismometer readings will join the only other set of extraterrestrial seismic data, from the Apollo lunar missions, in NASA’s Planetary Data System. They will also go into an international archive run by the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology, which houses “all the terrestrial seismic network data locations,” said JPL’s Sue Smrekar, InSight’s deputy principal investigator. “Now, we also have one on Mars.”

Smrekar said the data is expected to continue yielding discoveries for decades.

Managing Power

Earlier this summer, the lander had so little remaining power that the mission turned off all of InSight’s other science instruments in order to keep the seismometer running. They even turned off the fault protection system that would otherwise automatically shut down the seismometer if the system detects that the lander’s power generation is dangerously low.

“We were down to less than 20% of the original generating capacity,” said Banerdt. “That means we can’t afford to run the instruments around the clock.”

Recently, after a regional dust storm added to the lander’s dust-covered solar panels, the team decided to turn off the seismometer altogether in order to save power. Now that the storm is over, the seismometer is collecting data again – though the mission expects the lander only has enough power for a few more weeks.

Of the seismometer’s array of sensors, only the most sensitive were still operating, said Liz Barrett, who leads science and instrument operations for the team at JPL, adding, “We’re pushing it to the very end.”

Packing Up Twin

A silent member of the team is ForeSight, the full-size engineering model of InSight in JPL’s In-Situ Instrument Laboratory. Engineers used ForeSight to practice how InSight would place science instruments on the Martian surface with the lander’s robotic arm, test techniques to get the lander’s heat probe into the sticky Martian soil, and develop ways to reduce noise picked up by the seismometer.

ForeSight will be crated and placed in storage. “We’ll be packing it up with loving care,” Banerdt said. “It’s been a great tool, a great companion for us this whole mission.”

Declaring Mission End

NASA will declare the mission over when InSight misses two consecutive communication sessions with the spacecraft orbiting Mars, part of the Mars Relay Network – but only if the cause of the missed communication is the lander itself, said network manager Roy Gladden of JPL. After that, NASA’s Deep Space Network will listen for a time, just in case.

There will be no heroic measures to re-establish contact with InSight. While a mission-saving event – a strong gust of wind, say, that cleans the panels off – isn’t out of the question, it is considered unlikely.

In the meantime, as long as InSight remains in contact, the team will continue gathering data. “We’ll keep making science measurements as long as we can,” Banerdt said. “We’re at Mars’ mercy. Weather on Mars is not rain and snow; weather on Mars is dust and wind.”

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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NASA / JPL - Caltech

Happy Halloween, Everyone! InSight Makes Another Big Discovery Before It Soon Falls Silent Forever...

NASA / JPL - Caltech / University of Arizona

NASA's InSight Lander Detects Stunning Meteoroid Impact on Mars (News Release - October 27)

The agency’s lander felt the ground shake during the impact while cameras aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted the yawning new crater from space.

NASA’s InSight lander recorded a magnitude 4 marsquake last December 24, but scientists learned only later the cause of that quake: a meteoroid strike estimated to be one of the biggest seen on Mars since NASA began exploring the cosmos. What’s more, the meteoroid excavated boulder-size chunks of ice buried closer to the Martian equator than ever found before – a discovery with implications for NASA’s future plans to send astronauts to the Red Planet.

Scientists determined the quake resulted from a meteoroid impact when they looked at before-and-after images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and spotted a new, yawning crater. Offering a rare opportunity to see how a large impact shook the ground on Mars, the event and its effects are detailed in two papers published Thursday, October 27, in the journal Science.

The meteoroid is estimated to have spanned 16 to 39 feet (5 to 12 meters) – small enough that it would have burned up in Earth’s atmosphere, but not in Mars’ thin atmosphere, which is just 1% as dense as our planet’s. The impact, in a region called Amazonis Planitia, blasted a crater roughly 492 feet (150 meters) across and 70 feet (21 meters) deep. Some of the ejecta thrown by the impact flew as far as 23 miles (37 kilometers) away.

With images and seismic data documenting the event, this is believed to be one of the largest craters ever witnessed forming at any place in the solar system. Many larger craters exist on the Red Planet, but they are significantly older and predate any Mars mission.

“It’s unprecedented to find a fresh impact of this size,” said Ingrid Daubar of Brown University, who leads InSight’s Impact Science Working Group. “It’s an exciting moment in geologic history, and we got to witness it.”

InSight has seen its power drastically decline in recent months due to dust settling on its solar panels. The spacecraft is now expected to shut down within the next six weeks, bringing the mission’s science to an end.

InSight is studying the planet’s crust, mantle and core. Seismic waves are key to the mission and have revealed the size, depth and composition of Mars’ inner layers. Since landing in November 2018, InSight has detected 1,318 marsquakes, including several caused by smaller meteoroid impacts.

But the quake resulting from last December’s impact was the first observed to have surface waves – a kind of seismic wave that ripples along the top of a planet’s crust. The second of the two Science papers related to the big impact describes how scientists use these waves to study the structure of Mars’ crust.

Crater Hunters

In late 2021, InSight scientists reported to the rest of the team they had detected a major marsquake on December 24. The crater was first spotted on February 11, 2022, by scientists working at Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS), which built and operates two cameras aboard MRO. The Context Camera (CTX) provides black-and-white, medium-resolution images, while the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) produces daily maps of the entire planet, allowing scientists to track large-scale weather changes like the recent regional dust storm that further diminished InSight’s solar power.

The impact’s blast zone was visible in MARCI data that allowed the team to pin down a 24-hour period within which the impact occurred. These observations correlated with the seismic epicenter, conclusively demonstrating that a meteoroid impact caused the large December 24 marsquake.

“The image of the impact was unlike any I had seen before, with the massive crater, the exposed ice and the dramatic blast zone preserved in the Martian dust,” said Liliya Posiolova, who leads the Orbital Science and Operations Group at MSSS. “I couldn’t help but imagine what it must have been like to witness the impact, the atmospheric blast and debris ejected miles downrange.”

Establishing the rate at which craters appear on Mars is critical for refining the planet’s geological timeline. On older surfaces, such as those of Mars and our Moon, there are more craters than on Earth; on our planet, the processes of erosion and plate tectonics erase older features from the surface.

New craters also expose materials below the surface. In this case, large chunks of ice scattered by the impact were viewed by MRO’s High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) color camera.

Subsurface ice will be a vital resource for astronauts, who could use it for a variety of needs, including drinking water, agriculture and rocket propellant. Buried ice has never been spotted this close to the Martian equator, which, as the warmest part of Mars, is an appealing location for astronauts.

Source: NASA.Gov

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NASA / JPL - Caltech

InSight Continues to Make Martian Discoveries Till the Very End...

NASA / JPL - Caltech / University of Arizona

NASA's InSight 'Hears' Its First Meteoroid Impacts on Mars (News Release - September 19)

The Mars lander’s seismometer has picked up vibrations from four separate impacts in the past two years.

NASA’s InSight lander has detected seismic waves from four space rocks that crashed on Mars in 2020 and 2021. Not only do these represent the first impacts detected by the spacecraft’s seismometer since InSight touched down on the Red Planet in 2018, it also marks the first time seismic and acoustic waves from an impact have been detected on Mars.

A new paper published Monday in Nature Geoscience details the impacts, which ranged between 53 and 180 miles (85 and 290 kilometers) from InSight’s location, a region of Mars called Elysium Planitia.

The first of the four confirmed meteoroids – the term used for space rocks before they hit the ground – made the most dramatic entrance: It entered Mars’ atmosphere on September 5, 2021, exploding into at least three shards that each left a crater behind.

Then, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter flew over the estimated impact site to confirm the location. The orbiter used its black-and-white Context Camera to reveal three darkened spots on the surface. After locating these spots, the orbiter’s team used the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, or HiRISE, to get a color close-up of the craters (the meteoroid could have left additional craters in the surface, but they would be too small to see in HiRISE’s images).

“After three years of InSight waiting to detect an impact, those craters looked beautiful,” said Ingrid Daubar of Brown University, a co-author of the paper and a specialist in Mars impacts.

After combing through earlier data, scientists confirmed three other impacts had occurred on May 27, 2020; February 18, 2021; and August 31, 2021.

Researchers have puzzled over why they haven’t detected more meteoroid impacts on Mars. The Red Planet is next to the solar system’s main asteroid belt, which provides an ample supply of space rocks to scar the planet’s surface. Because Mars’ atmosphere is just 1% as thick as Earth’s, more meteoroids pass through it without disintegrating.

InSight’s seismometer has detected over 1,300 marsquakes. Provided by France’s space agency, the Centre National d’Études Spatiales, the instrument is so sensitive that it can detect seismic waves from thousands of miles away. But the September 5, 2021, event marks the first time an impact was confirmed as the cause of such waves.

InSight’s team suspects that other impacts may have been obscured by noise from wind or by seasonal changes in the atmosphere. But now that the distinctive seismic signature of an impact on Mars has been discovered, scientists expect to find more hiding within InSight’s nearly four years of data.

Science Behind the Strikes

Seismic data offer various clues that will help researchers better understand the Red Planet. Most marsquakes are caused by subsurface rocks cracking from heat and pressure. Studying how the resulting seismic waves change as they move through different material provides scientists a way to study Mars’ crust, mantle and core.

The four meteoroid impacts confirmed so far produced small quakes with a magnitude of no more than 2.0. Those smaller quakes provide scientists with only a glimpse into the Martian crust, while seismic signals from larger quakes, like the magnitude 5 event that occurred in May 2022, can also reveal details about the planet’s mantle and core.

But the impacts will be critical to refining Mars’ timeline. “Impacts are the clocks of the solar system,” said the paper’s lead author, Raphael Garcia of Institut Supérieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace in Toulouse, France. “We need to know the impact rate today to estimate the age of different surfaces.”

Scientists can approximate the age of a planet’s surface by counting its impact craters: The more they see, the older the surface. By calibrating their statistical models based on how often they see impacts occurring now, scientists can then estimate how many more impacts happened earlier in the solar system’s history.

InSight’s data, in combination with orbital images, can be used to rebuild a meteoroid’s trajectory and the size of its shock wave. Every meteoroid creates a shock wave as it hits the atmosphere and an explosion as it hits the ground. These events send sound waves through the atmosphere. The bigger the explosion, the more this sound wave tilts the ground when it reaches InSight. The lander’s seismometer is sensitive enough to measure how much the ground tilts from such an event and in what direction.

“We’re learning more about the impact process itself,” Garcia said. “We can match different sizes of craters to specific seismic and acoustic waves now.”

The lander still has time to study Mars. Dust buildup on the lander’s solar panels is reducing its power and will eventually lead to the spacecraft shutting down. Predicting precisely when is difficult, but based on the latest power readings, engineers now believe the lander could shut down between October of this year and January 2023.

Source: NASA.Gov

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Astrobotic's Moon Lander Successfully Conducts a Communications Test with NASA Relay Stations...

Astrobotic / Keystone Space Collaborative

NASA’s Deep Space Network Ground Testing with Peregrine a Success (Press Release)

Pittsburgh, PA – Last month, the Deep Space Network (DSN) from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) successfully completed an end-to-end communications test with Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander. These tests demonstrated compatibility with space-to-ground communications that will occur during Peregrine’s mission to the Moon.

After the Peregrine spacecraft separates from United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket, Peregrine will be utilizing DSN’s 34-meter dishes at Canberra, Australia; Madrid, Spain; and Goldstone, California. These dishes are the same suite used to communicate with the James Webb Space Telescope, as well as historic missions such as New Horizons, Solar Parker Probe, InSight, Juno, and MAVEN.

”Our team has completed a major test with the DSN global network and Astrobotic’s communication systems including flight avionics, ground support software, and mission ops infrastructure. We successfully passed commands, received telemetry, and determined ranging performance. The sense of accomplishment was palpable when the screens of our Mission Control center were illuminated by real telemetry coming from our spacecraft,” said Eduardo Lugo, Astrobotic Lead RF Engineer.

Testing with Peregrine and DSN was conducted over two weeks, culminating in confirmation that Peregrine can successfully transmit data and receive commands through DSN and to Astrobotic’s Mission Control Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

“This success marks a major program milestone for Peregrine mission as well as for Astrobotic as a company. Confirming the technical capabilities of our team and our custom-built avionics and communications systems in a sophisticated, system-level spacecraft test was a tremendous success. Seeing the entire team overcome test challenges felt close to flying the actual mission. This is a great accomplishment for our historic trip to the Moon,” says Ander Solorzano, Astrobotic’s Lead Systems Engineer and one of the Flight Directors for Peregrine Mission One.

Peregrine’s progress continues as its Space Robotics team also successfully integrated the OPAL Terrain Relative Navigation (TRN) compute hardware and associated camera to Peregrine’s flight decks. TRN is designed to enable precise and safe landings on the Moon, Mars, and beyond. The system will be leveraged again on Astrobotic’s Griffin Mission One. In addition to TRN, all twenty-four of Peregrine’s payloads have also been integrated with its flight decks.

The Peregrine spacecraft continues its final assembly at Astrobotic’s headquarters and is currently on schedule for final environmental testing before delivery to the launch site in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Source: Astrobotic

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Astrobotic

InSight Update: The Successful Mars Mission Will Soon Come to an End...

NASA / JPL - Caltech

NASA's InSight Still Hunting Marsquakes as Power Levels Diminish (News Release)

Dusty solar panels and darker skies are expected to bring the Mars lander mission to a close around the end of this year.

NASA’s InSight Mars lander is gradually losing power and is anticipated to end science operations later this summer. By December, InSight’s team expects the lander to have become inoperative, concluding a mission that has thus far detected more than 1,300 marsquakes – most recently, a magnitude 5 that occurred on May 4 – and located quake-prone regions of the Red Planet.

The information gathered from those quakes has allowed scientists to measure the depth and composition of Mars’ crust, mantle, and core. Additionally, InSight (short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) has recorded invaluable weather data and studied remnants of Mars’ ancient magnetic field.

“InSight has transformed our understanding of the interiors of rocky planets and set the stage for future missions,” said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division. “We can apply what we’ve learned about Mars’ inner structure to Earth, the Moon, Venus, and even rocky planets in other solar systems.”

InSight landed on Mars Nov. 26, 2018. Equipped with a pair of solar panels that each measures about 7 feet (2.2 meters) wide, it was designed to accomplish the mission’s primary science goals in its first Mars year (nearly two Earth years). Having achieved them, the spacecraft is now into an extended mission, and its solar panels have been producing less power as they continue to accumulate dust.

Because of the reduced power, the team will soon put the lander’s robotic arm in its resting position (called the “retirement pose”) for the last time later this month. Originally intended to deploy the seismometer and the lander’s heat probe, the arm has played an unexpected role in the mission: Along with using it to help bury the heat probe after sticky Martian soil presented the probe with challenges, the team used the arm in an innovative way to remove dust from the solar panels. As a result, the seismometer was able to operate more often than it would have otherwise, leading to new discoveries.

When InSight landed, the solar panels produced around 5,000 watt-hours each Martian day, or sol – enough to power an electric oven for an hour and 40 minutes. Now, they’re producing roughly 500 watt-hours per sol – enough to power the same electric oven for just 10 minutes.

Additionally, seasonal changes are beginning in Elysium Planitia, InSight’s location on Mars. Over the next few months, there will be more dust in the air, reducing sunlight – and the lander’s energy. While past efforts removed some dust, the mission would need a more powerful dust-cleaning event, such as a “dust devil” (a passing whirlwind), to reverse the current trend.

“We’ve been hoping for a dust cleaning like we saw happen several times to the Spirit and Opportunity rovers,” said Bruce Banerdt, InSight’s principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads the mission. “That’s still possible, but energy is low enough that our focus is making the most of the science we can still collect.”

If just 25% of InSight’s panels were swept clean by the wind, the lander would gain about 1,000 watt-hours per sol – enough to continue collecting science. However, at the current rate power is declining, InSight’s non-seismic instruments will rarely be turned on after the end of May.

Energy is being prioritized for the lander’s seismometer, which will operate at select times of day, such as at night, when winds are low and marsquakes are easier for the seismometer to “hear.” The seismometer itself is expected to be off by the end of summer, concluding the science phase of the mission.

At that point, the lander will still have enough power to operate, taking the occasional picture and communicating with Earth. But the team expects that around December, power will be low enough that one day InSight will simply stop responding.

Source: NASA.Gov

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InSight Update: The Biggest Tremor Yet Is Detected Beneath the Red Planet's Surface...

NASA / JPL - Caltech

NASA's InSight Records Monster Quake on Mars (News Release)

Estimated to be magnitude 5, the quake is the biggest ever detected on another planet.

NASA’s InSight Mars lander has detected the largest quake ever observed on another planet: an estimated magnitude 5 temblor that occurred on May 4, 2022, the 1,222nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission. This adds to the catalog of more than 1,313 quakes InSight has detected since landing on Mars in November 2018. The largest previously-recorded quake was an estimated magnitude 4.2 detected Aug. 25, 2021.

InSight was sent to Mars with a highly-sensitive seismometer, provided by France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), to study the deep interior of the planet. As seismic waves pass through or reflect off material in Mars’ crust, mantle, and core, they change in ways that seismologists can study to determine the depth and composition of these layers. What scientists learn about the structure of Mars can help them better understand the formation of all rocky worlds, including Earth and its Moon.

A magnitude 5 quake is a medium-size quake compared to those felt on Earth, but it’s close to the upper limit of what scientists hoped to see on Mars during InSight’s mission. The science team will need to study this new quake further before being able to provide details such as its location, the nature of its source, and what it might tell us about the interior of Mars.

“Since we set our seismometer down in December 2018, we’ve been waiting for ‘the big one,’” said Bruce Banerdt, InSight’s principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads the mission. “This quake is sure to provide a view into the planet like no other. Scientists will be analyzing this data to learn new things about Mars for years to come.”

The large quake comes as InSight is facing new challenges with its solar panels, which power the mission. As InSight’s location on Mars enters winter, there’s more dust in the air, reducing available sunlight. On May 7, 2022, the lander’s available energy fell just below the limit that triggers safe mode, where the spacecraft suspends all but the most essential functions. This reaction is designed to protect the lander and may occur again as available power slowly decreases.

After the lander completed its prime mission at the end of 2020, meeting its original science goals, NASA extended the mission through December 2022.

Source: NASA.Gov

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Felt that one‼️

After more than three years of listening to the soft rumbles of Mars, I just felt by far my biggest “marsquake” yet: looks like about magnitude 5. My team is studying the data to learn more. Science rewards patience!

More details: https://t.co/DKVy8tUrxU pic.twitter.com/bExr13Lkvw

— NASA InSight (@NASAInSight) May 9, 2022

OSIRIS-REx Will Study Asteroid Apophis Up-Close in 2029! And Much More...

Lockheed Martin

NASA Extends Exploration for 8 Planetary Science Missions (News Release)

Following a thorough evaluation, NASA has extended the planetary science missions of eight of its spacecraft due to their scientific productivity and potential to deepen our knowledge and understanding of the solar system and beyond.

The missions – Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, MAVEN, Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity rover), InSight lander, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, OSIRIS-REx, and New Horizons – have been selected for continuation, assuming their spacecraft remain healthy. Most of the missions will be extended for three years; however, OSIRIS-REx will be continued for nine years in order to reach a new destination, and InSight will be continued until the end of 2022, unless the spacecraft’s electrical power allows for longer operations.

Each extended mission proposal was reviewed by a panel of independent experts drawn from academia, industry, and NASA. In total, more than 50 reviewers evaluated the scientific return of the respective proposals. Two independent review chairs oversaw the process and, based on the panel evaluations, validated that these eight science missions hold substantial potential to continue bringing new discoveries and addressing compelling new science questions.

Beyond providing important programmatic benefit to NASA, several of these missions promise multi-divisional science benefits across NASA’s entire Science Mission Directorate (SMD), including their use as data relays for Mars surface landers and rovers, as well as to support other NASA initiatives such as the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS).

“Extended missions provide us with the opportunity to leverage NASA’s large investments in exploration, allowing continued science operations at a cost far lower than developing a new mission,” said Lori Glaze, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA’s Headquarters in Washington. “Maximizing taxpayer dollars in this way allows missions to obtain valuable new science data, and in some cases, allows NASA to explore new targets with totally new science goals.”

Two of the extended missions, MAVEN and OSIRIS-REx, welcome new principal investigators (PIs).

OSIRIS-APEX (Principal Investigator: Dr. Daniella DellaGiustina, University of Arizona): The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission is currently on its way back to Earth to deliver the samples of asteroid Bennu that it collected in 2020. Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx PI, will remain in place for the primary mission, while DellaGiustina begins her role as the newly-named PI for OSIRIS-APophis EXplorer (OSIRIS-APEX). With a new name to reflect the extended mission’s new goals, the OSIRIS-APEX team will redirect the spacecraft to encounter Apophis, an asteroid roughly 1,200 feet (roughly 370 meters) in diameter that will come within 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) of Earth in 2029. OSIRIS-APEX will enter orbit around Apophis soon after the asteroid’s Earth flyby, providing an unprecedented close-up look at this S-type asteroid. It plans to study changes in the asteroid caused by its close flyby of Earth and use the spacecraft’s gas thrusters to attempt to dislodge and study the dust and small rocks on and below Apophis’ surface.

MAVEN (Principal Investigator: Dr. Shannon Curry, University of California, Berkeley): The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission plans to study the interaction between Mars’ atmosphere and magnetic field during the upcoming solar maximum. MAVEN’s observations as the Sun’s activity level increases toward the maximum of its 11-year cycle will deepen our understanding of how Mars’ upper atmosphere and magnetic field interact with the Sun.

InSight (Principal Investigator: Dr. Bruce Banerdt, JPL): Since landing on Mars in 2018, the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission has operated the only active seismic station beyond Earth. Its seismic monitoring of “marsquakes” has provided constraints on Mars’ interior, formation, and current activity. The extended mission will continue InSight’s seismic and weather monitoring if the spacecraft remains healthy. However, due to dust accumulation on its solar panels, InSight’s electrical power production is low, and the mission is unlikely to continue operations for the duration of its current extended mission unless its solar panels are cleared by a passing ‘dust devil’ in Mars’ atmosphere.

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) (Project Scientist: Dr. Noah Petro, GSFC): LRO will continue to study the surface and geology of the Moon. The evolution of LRO’s orbit will allow it to study new regions away from the poles in unprecedented detail, including the Permanently Shadowed Regions (PSRs) near the poles where water ice may be found. LRO will also provide important programmatic support for NASA’s efforts to return to the Moon.

Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) (Project Scientist: Dr. Ashwin Vasavada, JPL): The Mars Science Laboratory and its Curiosity rover have driven more than 16 miles (27 km) on the surface of Mars, exploring the history of habitability in Gale Crater. In its fourth extended mission, MSL will climb to higher elevations, exploring the critical sulfate-bearing layers which give unique insights into the history of water on Mars.

New Horizons (Principal Investigator: Dr. Alan Stern, SwRI): New Horizons flew past Pluto in 2015 and the Kuiper belt object (KBO) Arrokoth in 2019. In its second extended mission, New Horizons will continue to explore the distant solar system out to 63 astronomical units (AU) from Earth. The New Horizons spacecraft can potentially conduct multi-disciplinary observations of relevance to the solar system and NASA’s Heliophysics and Astrophysics Divisions. Additional details regarding New Horizons’ science plan will be provided at a later date.

Mars Odyssey (Project Scientist: Dr. Jeffrey Plaut, JPL): Mars Odyssey’s extended mission will perform new thermal studies of rocks and ice below Mars’ surface, monitor the radiation environment, and continue its long-running climate monitoring campaign. The Odyssey orbiter also continues to provide unique support for real-time data relay from other Mars spacecraft. The length of Odyssey’s extended mission may be limited by the amount of propellant remaining aboard the spacecraft.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) (Project Scientist: Dr. Rich Zurek, JPL): MRO has provided a wealth of data regarding the processes on Mars’ surface. In its sixth extended mission, MRO will study the evolution of Mars’ surface, ices, active geology, and atmosphere and climate. In addition, MRO will continue to provide important data-relay service to other Mars missions. MRO’s CRISM instrument will be shut down entirely, after the loss of its cryocooler has ended the use of one of its two spectrometers.

NASA’s Planetary Science Division currently operates 14 spacecraft across the solar system, has 12 missions in formulation and implementation, and partners with international space agencies on seven others.

Source: NASA.Gov

The Latest Update on the Mars Sample Return Mission...

NASA / JPL - Caltech

NASA Begins Testing Robotics to Bring First Samples Back From Mars (News Release - December 13)

Engineers are developing the crucial hardware needed for a series of daring space missions that will be carried out in the coming decade.

Testing has already begun on what would be the most sophisticated endeavor ever attempted at the Red Planet: bringing rock and sediment samples from Mars to Earth for closer study.

The multi-mission Mars Sample Return campaign began when NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars this past February to collect Martian rock samples in search of ancient microscopic life. Out of Perseverance’s 43 sample tubes, four have been filled with rock cores and one with Martian atmosphere. Mars Sample Return seeks to bring select tubes back to Earth, where generations of scientists will be able to study them with powerful lab equipment far too large to send to Mars.

Getting those samples into terrestrial labs would take a decade and involve European partners and multiple NASA centers. ESA (the European Space Agency) is developing a rover for the effort, with engineers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, designing its wheels. The rover would transfer samples to a lander, being developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, that would use a robotic arm (developed by ESA) to pack the samples into a small rocket, called a Mars Ascent Vehicle, being designed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

The rocket would launch from the lander to deliver the sample capsule to an ESA spacecraft orbiting Mars. Inside the orbiter, the capsule would be prepared for delivery to Earth by hardware that a team led by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is developing. This preparation would include sealing the sample capsule within a clean container to trap any Martian material inside, sterilizing the seal, and placing the sealed container into an Earth-entry capsule before the return trip to Earth.

The Lander

To develop the lander, as well as the system that would help launch the sample-laden rocket from it, engineers at NASA’s JPL are drawing from a long history of Mars exploration: JPL has led nine successful Mars landings, including rovers and stationary landers. But the Sample Retrieval Lander would be the largest, heaviest spacecraft of its type to ever go to Mars, and the Mars Ascent Vehicle launching from it would be the first rocket ever fired off another planet.

This is where the testing comes in.

To carry and launch the Mars Ascent Vehicle, the lander needs to be a sturdy platform, weighing about 5,291 pounds (2,400 kilograms) – almost twice as heavy as Perseverance, which was lowered to the Martian surface with cables from a rocket-powered jet pack. The Sample Retriever Lander wouldn’t have a jet pack; its legs would have to absorb the impact of touchdown, relying on retrorockets to slow its descent, similar to recent Mars lander missions like InSight and Phoenix.

That’s why Pavlina Karafillis has been dropping a prototype lander – repeatedly – in a warehouse-like space at JPL. As test engineer for the Sample Retrieval Lander’s legs, she and her colleagues have been using high-speed cameras to observe this prototype’s legs slam onto a base. QR-code-like marks on each of the prototype’s “feet” help the cameras track the legs’ motion. The team uses slow-motion video to continually update their computer models, which help them understand how energy would be dispersed throughout the lander.

“The last step of the journey is really important,” Karafillis said. “There’s all kinds of landing conditions you have to take into account, like rocks, or really soft sand, or coming in at an angle. This is why we have to do all this testing.”

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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Happy First Day of Autumn: A New Discovery Has Been Made by the InSight Mars Lander...

NASA / JPL - Caltech

NASA’s InSight Finds Three Big Marsquakes, Thanks to Solar-Panel Dusting (News Release)

The lander cleared enough dust from one solar panel to keep its seismometer on through the summer, allowing scientists to study the three biggest quakes they’ve seen on Mars.

On Sept. 18, NASA’s InSight lander celebrated its 1,000th Martian day, or sol, by measuring one of the biggest, longest-lasting marsquakes the mission has ever detected. The temblor is estimated to be about a magnitude 4.2 and shook for nearly an hour-and-a-half.

This is the third major quake InSight has detected in a month: On Aug. 25, the mission’s seismometer detected two quakes of magnitudes 4.2 and 4.1. For comparison, a magnitude 4.2 quake has five times the energy of the mission’s previous record holder, a magnitude 3.7 quake detected in 2019.

The mission studies seismic waves to learn more about Mars’ interior. The waves change as they travel through a planet’s crust, mantle, and core, providing scientists a way to peer deep below the surface. What they learn can shed light on how all rocky worlds form, including Earth and its Moon.

The quakes might not have been detected at all had the mission not taken action earlier in the year, as Mars’ highly elliptical orbit took it farther from the Sun. Lower temperatures required the spacecraft to rely more on its heaters to keep warm; that, plus dust buildup on InSight’s solar panels, has reduced the lander’s power levels, requiring the mission to conserve energy by temporarily turning off certain instruments.

The team managed to keep the seismometer on by taking a counterintuitive approach: They used InSight’s robotic arm to trickle sand near one solar panel in the hopes that, as wind gusts carried it across the panel, the granules would sweep off some of the dust. The plan worked, and over several dust-clearing activities, the team saw power levels remain fairly steady. Now that Mars is approaching the Sun once again, power is starting to inch back up.

“If we hadn’t acted quickly earlier this year, we might have missed out on some great science,” said InSight’s principal investigator, Bruce Banerdt of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads the mission. “Even after more than two years, Mars seems to have given us something new with these two quakes, which have unique characteristics.”

Temblor Insights

While the Sept. 18 quake is still being studied, scientists already know more about the Aug. 25 quakes: The magnitude 4.2 event occurred about 5,280 miles (8,500 kilometers) from InSight – the most distant temblor the lander has detected so far.

Scientists are working to pinpoint the source and which direction the seismic waves traveled, but they know the shaking occurred too far to have originated where InSight has detected almost all of its previous large quakes: Cerberus Fossae, a region roughly 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) away where lava may have flowed within the last few million years. One especially intriguing possibility is Valles Marineris, the epically long canyon system that scars the Martian equator. The approximate center of that canyon system is 6,027 miles (9,700 kilometers) from InSight.

To the surprise of scientists, the Aug. 25 quakes were two different types, as well. The magnitude 4.2 quake was dominated by slow, low-frequency vibrations, while fast, high-frequency vibrations characterized the magnitude 4.1 quake. The magnitude 4.1 quake was also much closer to the lander – only about 575 miles (925 kilometers) away.

That’s good news for seismologists: Recording different quakes from a range of distances and with different kinds of seismic waves provides more information about a planet’s inner structure. This summer, the mission’s scientists used previous marsquake data to detail the depth and thickness of the planet’s crust and mantle, plus the size of its molten core.

Despite their differences, the two August quakes do have something in common other than being big: Both occurred during the day, the windiest – and, to a seismometer, noisiest – time on Mars. InSight’s seismometer usually finds marsquakes at night, when the planet cools off and winds are low. But the signals from these quakes were large enough to rise above any noise caused by wind.

Looking ahead, the mission’s team is considering whether to perform more dust cleanings after Mars solar conjunction, when Earth and Mars are on opposite sides of the Sun. Because the Sun’s radiation can affect radio signals, interfering with communications, the team will stop issuing commands to the lander on Sept. 29, though the seismometer will continue to listen for quakes throughout conjunction.

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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NASA / JPL - Caltech