2012/08/20 06:17 CDT NASA announced its newest mission today, a geophysical explorer of Mars called InSIGHT (an acronym for the mouth-numbing INterior exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport). It’s a really exciting scientific mission which will place a seismometer on the surface, bore a probe five meters down into the Martian soil to measure heat flow, and use a clever antenna trick to very accurately measure the wobbles of the Martian orbit.
NASA Selects InSight Mars 2016 Lander Posted By Bruce Betts 2012/08/20 06:13 CDT As part of its Discovery program, today NASA announced the selection of the InSight lander mission to investigate the interior of Mars. InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) will use a seismometer, a heat flow experiment, and precision tracking of the spacecraft’s location (and thus the rotation of Mars) to better understand the Martian interior. InSight is led by W. Bruce Banerdt, a planetary geophysicist at JPL. InSight is scheduled to land on Mars in September 2016 to begin its two-year scientific mission.
The Mars InSight (Interior exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) lander will perform the first geophysical investigations on Mars Today, NASA announced the newest Discovery-class mission, a Mars lander called InSight. It's not a rover; it's a drill that will go down 5 meters and help us figure out what happens in the core of our neighboring terrestrial planet. We should all keep in mind that along with the selection of this mission, NASA had to choose not to do two other fantastic missions, one to hop from place to place around a comet, and another that would have gone to Titan and float a boat on its liquid natural gas ocean. How cool would these have been? The price of these "Discovery Class" missions is so low compared to many, many other things that NASA and our government do. It's heartbreaking.
Insight Mission
NASA selects DLR experiment for InSight mission to Mars
by Staff Writers Berlin, Germany (SPX) Aug 23, 2012
After the successful landing of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, NASA has selected one more lander mission to Mars. The InSight mission will reach Mars in September 2016, after a six-month journey; it has been designed to take a 'look' into the deep interior of the Red Planet; it will do this with geophysical experiments including DLR's HP3, which will penetrate several metres into the Martian subsurface to measure the soil's thermo-physical and electrical properties.InSight stands for 'Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport'. The mission name clearly explains that geophysical experiments are conducted on and underneath the Martian surface; for example, measuring the velocity of seismic waves or the heat flow.
One of the aims of the mission is to understand the structure and state of the core and crust, as well as the thermal evolution of Mars. The HP3 experiment for the InSight mission was developed at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft-und Raumfahrt; DLR). HP3 is short for 'Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package'.Lockheed Martin to Build Spacecraft for Insight Mars Lander
by Staff Writers Denver CO (SPX) Aug 23, 2012
An exciting and novel mission to Mars has been selected as NASA's next Discovery mission. The Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission, led by principal investigator Bruce Banerdt of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and managed by JPL, will make the first ever measurements of the interior of Mars, providing insight into the evolution of the terrestrial planets.
Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company in Denver will build and operate the InSight spacecraft. The cost of the mission, excluding the launch vehicle and related services, is capped at $425 million in 2010 dollars.