InSight

Mission

Kind: Mars lander

State: Operational

Place: Mars

Operator: NASA / JPL

Instruments: 1) Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure, 2) Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package, 3) Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment, 4) Temperature and Winds for InSight,

Date

Start:

Duration: Planned: 709 sols (728 days)Current: 387 sols (398 days) since landing

Mission Ending

"Life's like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending." - Jim Henson

Rocket

Rocket: Atlas V 401

Kind: NASA / JPL

Manufacturer: Lockheed Martin Space Systems

Mass: 694 kg (1,530 lb)

Launch Site: Vandenberg SLC-3E

Flyby

1º Flyby: Mars

Orbit

"You’re going very fast when you’re on orbit, going around the world once every hour and a half." - Robert Crippen

Lander

Place: Mars

Region: Elysium Planitia4°30′09″N 135°37′24″E / 4.5024°N 135.6234°E / 4.5024, 135.6234 (InSight landing site)

Date: 26 November 2018, 19:52:59 (2019-12-29UTC22:33:21) UTC

Component: Mars Cube One (MarCO)

The Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission is a robotic lander designed to study the deep interior of the planet Mars. It was manufactured by Lockheed Martin, is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and most of its scientific instruments were built by European agencies. The mission launched on 5 May 2018 at 11:05 UTC aboard an Atlas V-401 rocket and successfully landed at Elysium Planitia on Mars on 26 November 2018 at 19:52:59 UTC. InSight traveled 483 million km (300 million mi) during its journey. InSight's objectives are to place a seismometer, called SEIS, on the surface of Mars to measure seismic activity and provide accurate 3D models of the planet's interior, and measure internal heat flow using a heat probe called HP3 to study Mars' early geological evolution. This could bring a new understanding of how the Solar System's terrestrial planets – Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars – and Earth's Moon form and evolve. The lander was originally planned for launch in March 2016. Following a persistent vacuum failure in the SEIS instrument prior to launch, with the 2016 launch window missed, InSight was returned to Lockheed Martin's facility in Denver, Colorado, for storage. NASA officials decided in March 2016 to delay launching InSight to May 2018. This allowed time for the seismometer to be fixed, although it increased the total cost from US$675 million to US$830 million. By reusing technology from the Mars Phoenix lander, which successfully landed on Mars in 2008, mission costs and risks were reduced.