In less than a week, European Space Agency's ExoMars is set to launch. It was a project originally supported by NASA but withdrawn because of budget constraints. Now, NASA announced that its InSight mission, wherein its lander was grounded just three months before launch to Mars in 2015, will make it to the Red Planet, after all.
Rumors swirled that the mission could be cancelled but NASA announced that it would not be scrapped. Instead, the InSight mission, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is set to launch on May 5, 2018 with its planned landing on Mars on Nov. 26, 2018.
This trails an announcement on December 2015 that the launch will not happen this year because of technical problems, including a vacuum leak in the spacecraft's primary science equipment.
"The science goals of InSight are compelling, and the NASA and CNES plans to overcome the technical challenges are sound," says John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
"The quest to understand the interior of Mars has been a longstanding goal of planetary scientists for decades. We're excited to be back on the path for a launch, now in 2018," he added.
Fixing Bugs
The Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), the science instrument that experienced a technical problem in December 2015, will be rebuilt and reconstructed as well as undergo qualifications of its vacuum enclosure. This will be carried out by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboraboty (JPL).
The Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology built SEIS as they received support from the European Space Agency's PRODEX program and the Swiss Space Office.
The French Space Agency (CNES) is responsible for the lander's integration and testing. Regular interim reviews are scheduled to take place in the next six months to monitor the technical progress and continued feasibility.
InSight: NASA's Discovery Program Mission
The goal of the InSight mission is to launch a single geophysical lander on Mars to study its interior. It aims to shed light on the processes that shaped and created the rocky planets of the solar system, including Earth, billions of years ago.
The lander will drill deep beneath the surface of the Red Planet to detect pieces of information about the processes involved in terrestrial planet formation. It will also measure the planet's vital signs including temperature, seismology and precision tracking.
