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NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Seismometers in a vacuum sealed container (on the ground, left), used to listen for tremors on Mars, was one of the main science instruments on the suspended NASA InSight mission.
NASA has suspended its next mission to Mars after problems with a French-built seismological instrument could not be fixed in time for the scheduled launch. The mission, a lander called InSight that was to listen for tremors on Mars as a way of understanding the planet’s interior, will not launch in March 2016, the agency said today. NASA has not announced a new launch date, but because of the relative orbits of Mars and Earth, the agency will have to wait at least 26 months before it can try to launch again.
“The decision follows unsuccessful attempts to repair an air leak on a key component of the mission’s science payload,” NASA said in a statement.
On 3 December, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which is managing the mission, confirmed that there was a leak in a vacuum-sealed metal sphere that holds three seismometers. The instrument, called Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), was one of two main science probes, along with a thermometer that would be sent down a small drilled hole. SEIS, supplied by the French space agency CNES, would have been placed on the surface of Mars, where it would have listened for faint rumblings through the planet’s crust: marsquakes. Although CNES had been working overtime to try and repair the vacuum seal, those efforts were apparently not sufficient.
“We’re all just pretty disappointed right now. Devastated would be a better word,” says Lisa Pratt, a biogeochemist at Indiana University, Bloomington, and chairwoman of a Mars advisory committee for NASA. “Everyone has been waiting to get a seismic instrument on Mars after Viking.”
Pratt was referring to NASA’s twin Viking landers of 1976, which also carried seismometers, but on top of the lander decks, where they were subject to background noise from martian winds. The seismometer on Viking 1 failed, and the one on Viking 2 became a better wind detector than anything else. Pratt says a properly insulated seismometer, like the one InSight has, is the key to pinning down the boundaries of the crust, mantle, and core on Mars.
Pratt adds that the delay also speaks to the extra challenges of trying to support international collaborations. “‘International’ is so built into all of NASA’s language for the path to humans at Mars,” she says. “You don’t want any vibrant international collaboration to suffer a setback like this.”
NASA will hold a 3:30 p.m. EDT teleconference today to explain the decision. Come back to ScienceInsider for more details.
The $425 million mission was the most recent selection in NASA’s Discovery program, a line of low-cost, competitive missions led by a single principal investigator. InSight was selected over a comet hopper mission, and one that would have landed a boat on Saturn’s moon Titan.
NASA delays Mars InSight mission | Science/AAAS | News
Well this is frustrating.
