In 2012, the Curiosity rover spent seven minutes descending from the upper layers of the Martian atmosphere to the surface of the Red Planet, slowing its speed from 13 thousand miles per hour to zero. At the same time, the signals transmitted by the spacecraft took twice as long to reach the Earth. NASA scientists and engineers at these minutes stood with bated breath, expecting to receive the news that their brainchild had crashed (the Curiosity landing went well).
NASA will experience those "seven minutes of terror" again this year when the planet's latest mission to Mars arrives in November. Unlike the Curiosity rover, the entire life cycle of the Insight vehicle (InSight - the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) will proceed at one point on the surface of Mars. He has to dig into the ground to study the properties of the inner part of the planet.
The mission kicks off early Saturday morning from California, weather permitting. (Currently, US Air Force meteorologists at Vandenberg Air Force Base predict only a 20 percent chance of good weather for a successful launch. Insight is due to launch by June 8, until the distance between Earth and Mars begins to increase, allowing fast, direct travel).
But before surviving another terrifying landing, NASA will have to wait six months.
During this long voyage, Insight's team of scientists, engineers and other employees will train management actions, test command sequence, and exercise a lot of patience.
The journey begins with a collective sigh of relief for the people left on Earth. By the time the spacecraft reaches the launch pad, virtually every piece of it will be vigorously tested - placed in cryogenic chambers, shaken violently from side to side, and loudly exploded. Everything is held together by heavy metal and blood, sweat and tears. When the spacecraft is finally launched into space, its weight increases severalfold.
"You are free. It's done,”says Florence Tan, NASA's Deputy Chief Technologist for Science Missions. Tan was the lead electrical engineer for the Curiosity Sample Analysis Module. She also worked on the Cassini mission, which reached Saturn last year. It took her seven years to reach her destination. “There’s nothing you can do about it. Nothing can be returned."
Music will play, and champagne will be brought out, but the holiday will not be long. Within days of launch, the Insight team must conduct structural checks on the spacecraft to ensure that it has successfully survived launch loads. They will carry out more checks than during the monitoring of the performance of devices and various systems.
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Most of the time the spacecraft travels to Mars is one giant rehearsal. Personnel fall under a flurry of readiness tests for various operations. They train control, data collection, and analyze what their spacecraft might encounter while on Mars. It simulates everything from deploying tools to scheduling meetings. They check how and when to send commands to make sure that any guide does not interfere with others.
During the nine-month journey to Mars of the Curiosity rover, NASA specialists created a copy of it in the New Mexico desert. Scientists and engineers returned to the laboratories where they worked, imagining that this is a real apparatus. Their tasks include studying grainy landscape photographs, planning where the rover will drive, where to drill the soil to obtain samples.
“When we finally get back, we won't be like deer blinded by the headlights,” Tan said.
NASA doesn't make it any simpler. “The people who created the tests will throw some unexpected glitches at us to figure out how we’ll respond if there really is a problem,” said Paul Mahaffy, principal investigator for the Curiosity Sample Analysis Division.
And all this time, they periodically check the spacecraft itself to assess the performance of its instruments and various systems. It is rare, though rare, that a disaster can occur during the travel phase to the destination. In 2002, a device sent to study two comets in the inner solar system collapsed just six weeks after launch. The Contour (COmet Nucleus TOUR) fired its thrusters to leave Earth's orbit and set off on its journey, but eventually overheated and shattered. Tang, who helped build it, says his untimely loss came as a shock.
Insight will make similar course adjustments on its way to Mars. The lander, with its straight legs and circular solar panels on either side, resembles a mosquito. This craft will dig deeper than previous missions that have worked primarily on the surface of Mars, such as canyons, rocks and soil. Now it is planned to explore the inner part of the planet, its crust, mantle and core.
Upon descent, the lander's 7-foot arm will retrieve two instruments to place on the surface in front of the craft. The seismometer will track earthquakes, which on Mars, respectively, are called "Marsquakes". Scientists believe they can be caused by meteorites falling on the planet or tectonic activity. The "heat probe" will measure the internal temperature of the planet. Back in the spacecraft, two radio antennas will track how sub-surface conditions affect the planet's movement around the sun.
There will also be a camera capable of capturing a small workspace of the lander a million miles from Earth.
Scientists hope that the Insight mission will help them learn more about the formation of rocky planets in the solar system, which includes the Earth. Of course, before that happens, Insight must survive the journey and then survive the landing. Sending a spacecraft to Mars is easier than gently landing it on the surface.
Only one country managed to successfully descend on Mars - the United States (although there were failures, as in 1999). Several lander launched by the Soviet Union in the 1970s crashed, either during the descent or a few minutes after landing. The last attempt to land a lander on Mars was made in 2016 by Europeans. The spacecraft Schiaparelli, named after a 19th century astronomer, crashed. In images taken later from the orbit of Mars, he appeared in the form of an exclamation mark the color of charcoal against the backdrop of a rusty-red landscape.
When it comes time to plant Insight, Matt Golombek will come into play. Golombek is the "landing pad guy" at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California; he has spent 20 years collecting and evaluating potential landing sites for Mars missions, including the first successful rover, the Sojourner, which made it to the planet in 1997. The landing site for every Mars mission is always “a smooth, flat, boring place,” Golombek said. Rocky terrain, harsh rock outcrops and sloping areas can damage or overturn the spacecraft. And since Insight cannot maneuver, the team has practically no room for error. Landing operations are automated, so little can be done while the rover is descending.
“It looks like a launch,” Golombek said. "You are sitting here, everything is programmed in the rocket, and all you can do is pray that it does its job."
I asked him if he happens to get impatient during months of waiting for this nail-biting moment.
“No, I think I've been doing this for enough time to realize that it doesn't make sense,” he said. "You just have to wait."
Marina Koren
