NASA’s InSight is ready to work on Mars
We know NASA’s InSight spacecraft successfully landed on Mars on 26th November, 2018 to study deep region of the planet. The system is now ready to initiate its task at Elysium Planitia. Elysium Planitia, the lava plain on the Martian surface where InSight spacecraft landed on 26th November. InSight has robotic arm which will lift science instrument from the deck to place them on the surface of Mars to study its deep region.
But before setting the instrument, InSight camera located on its arm’s elbow will capture photos of the Martian surface to find out perfect place for scientific experiment using seismometer and heat flow probe.
"Today we can see the first glimpses of our workspace," said Bruce Banerdt, the mission's principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "By early next week, we'll be imaging it in finer detail and creating a full mosaic."
InSight has another camera, named the Instrument Context Camera, placed under the lander’s deck to take images of the workspace. However, the quality of photos may not be as good as the images taken by the camera located on the robotic arm’s elbow. Despite having a protective cover, the Instrument Context Camera can’t save them from dust attack. Nevertheless, the camera works correctly and is able to take photos of the red planet.
To find a right place for setting the instruments on the Martian surface is not an easy task, it may take two to three months.
InSight’s instruments are being checked by mission engineers to know whether they are ready to use at the workspace. Some instruments such as pressure sensor, wind and temperature sensor, and a magnetometer sensor have already started gathering data.
"We did extensive testing on Earth. But we know that everything is a little different for the lander on Mars, so faults are not unusual," Hoffman said. "They can delay operations, but we're not in a rush. We want to be sure that each operation that we perform on Mars is safe, so we set our safety monitors to be fairly sensitive initially."
InSight will work for two Earth Years which are equivalent to one Mars year to collect data from inside section of the Martian surface. It will help scientists understand the inside structure of the red planet.
Though human hasn’t been able to land on Mars so far, they managed to send robotic spacecraft which has already touched down on the red planet on 26 November, a great achievement for NASA. It will help NASA’s scientists have a close view of the Martian surface which is not possible to collect using ground telescope. More images and data of the red planet surface will be sent by InSight.
Image and content source:
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasas-mars-insight-flexes-its-arm