Inside The Mars InSight Mission

The InSight lander took this image of Mars’ Elysium Planitia with its Instrument Context Camera, still shrouded by a dust cover, minutes after touchdown. The plain just north of the Martian equator provided a level landing surface with plenty of sunlight to power the lander’s solar arrays.

For this shot, InSight used a different camera—the Instrument Deployment Camera, which is mounted on a robotic arm that can capture a 45 X 45-deg. field of view.

A pair of cubesats known as Mars Cube One allowed engineers to monitor the landing by relaying InSight’s UHF telemetry and retransmitting the signals over X-band frequencies to Earth. The satellites are nicknamed EVE and WALL-E, after the robots in love that were featured in the 2008 animated movie, “WALL-E.”

The control room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, was a scene of celebration after the Nov. 26 landing. Among the revelers are Tom Hoffman, InSight project manager and Sue Smrekar, the deputy principal investigator.

Lockheed Martin has built nine aeroshell entry systems to protect spacecraft from temperatures of up to 2,800F during entry into the Martian atmosphere. From there, the lander was slowed by a 39-ft.-dia. supersonic parachute and then a dozen Aerojet Rocketdyne MR-107N retrorockets for a gentle landing.

Given that InSight is focused on looking beneath Mars’ surface, its seismometer setup SEIS, for Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure, is of utmost importance. The instruments will be covered by a dome-shaped housing to protect them from dust. The seismometers, sensitive enough to detect vibrations half the width of a hydrogen atom, will listen for low-frequency acoustical waves from Mars' quakes and meteor impacts. The measurements will help scientists understand the size and composition of the planet’s metal-rich core. It may even be able to determine whether liquid water or active volcanoes lie under the surface.

Germany’s Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package consists of a heat pipe that will be driven 16 ft. below the surface. The experiment uses a spring-driven internal hammer-like device to burrow into the ground and place a trailing cable laced with 14 sensors to collect temperatures at different depths. It will determine how much heat is coming from within Mars and the source of the heat, providing clues about Martian evolution.

The Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment, led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, uses a pair of radio antennas to transmit a tone to Earth. Changes in the frequency will allow precise tracking of the lander’s location to determine how much Mars wobbles as it orbits the Sun, information that will flesh out computer models of the planet’s core and structure.