InSight launching in 2018

[tater]

 

[insert_name]

looks like the seismometer is on the ground

[Brotoro]

Looks like they never cleaned that lens.

[MinimumSky5]

I'm guessing that the dust cover wasn't as effective as they expected, and they can hardly send a technician over to wipe it down! 

[DDE]

1 hour ago, MinimumSky5 said:

I'm guessing that the dust cover wasn't as effective as they expected, and they can hardly send a technician over to wipe it down! 

Didn’t one of the rovers have a windshield wiper?

[Green Baron]

So, Insight has made its move. I'm really looking forward to the planet's answer.

[Reactordrone]

And a much cleaner shot from the deployment arm camera, https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7310

 

[MinimumSky5]

1 hour ago, DDE said:

Didn’t one of the rovers have a windshield wiper?

Err, no? Electrostatic repulsers have been discussed after seeing what happened to the MER's solar panels, but none have flown to my knowledge. 

[DDE]

8 hours ago, MinimumSky5 said:

Err, no? Electrostatic repulsers have been discussed after seeing what happened to the MER's solar panels, but none have flown to my knowledge. 

Ah, looks like Curiosity's Dust Removal Tool suffered strange permutations in my mind.

[James Kerman]

Insight has now made adjustments to its seismic sensor and has deployed its wind and thermal shield.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Quote

For the past several weeks, NASA's InSight lander has been making adjustments to the seismometer it set on the Martian surface on Dec. 19. Now it's reached another milestone by placing a domed shield over the seismometer to help the instrument collect accurate data. The seismometer will give scientists their first look at the deep interior of the Red Planet, helping them understand how it and other rocky planets are formed.

The Wind and Thermal Shield helps protect the supersensitive instrument from being shaken by passing winds, which can add "noise" to its data. The dome's aerodynamic shape causes the wind to press it toward the planet's surface, ensuring it won't flip over. A skirt made of chain mail and thermal blankets rings the bottom, allowing it to settle easily over any rocks, though there are few at InSight's location.

An even bigger concern for InSight's seismometer - called the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) - is temperature change, which can expand and contract metal springs and other parts inside the seismometer. Where InSight landed, temperatures fluctuate by about 170 degrees Fahrenheit (94 degrees Celsius) over the course of a Martian day, or sol.

"Temperature is one of our biggest bugaboos," said InSight Principal Investigator Bruce Banerdt of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the InSight mission and built the Wind and Thermal Shield. "Think of the shield as putting a cozy over your food on a table. It keeps SEIS from warming up too much during the day or cooling off too much at night. In general, we want to keep the temperature as steady as possible."

On Earth, seismometers are often buried about four feet (1.2 meters) underground in vaults, which helps keep the temperature stable. InSight can't build a vault on Mars, so the mission relies on several measures to protect its seismometer. The shield is the first line of defense.

A second line of defense is SEIS itself, which is specially engineered to correct for wild temperature swings on the Martian surface. The seismometer was built so that as some parts expand and contract, others do so in the opposite direction to partially cancel those effects. Additionally, the instrument is vacuum-sealed in a titanium sphere that insulates its sensitive insides and reduces the influence of temperature.

But even that isn't quite enough. The sphere is enclosed within yet another insulating container - a copper-colored hexagonal box visible during SEIS's deployment. The walls of this box are honeycombed with cells that trap air and keep it from moving. Mars provides an excellent gas for this insulation: Its thin atmosphere is primarily composed of carbon dioxide, which at low pressure is especially slow to conduct heat.

With these three insulating barriers, SEIS is well-protected from thermal "noise" seeping into the data and masking the seismic waves that InSight's team wants to study. Finally, most additional interference from the Martian environment can be detected by InSight's weather sensors, then filtered out by mission scientists.

With the seismometer on the ground and covered, InSight's team is readying for its next step: deploying the heat flow probe, called the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP³), onto the Martian surface. That's expected to happen next week.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7325

 

[James Kerman]

Both MarCO cubesats (EVE and WALL-E) have ceased communicating with NASA.
 

Quote

Now well past Mars, the daring twins seem to have reached their limit. It's been over a month since engineers have heard from MarCO, which followed NASA's InSight to the Red Planet. At this time, the mission team considers it unlikely they'll be heard from again.

MarCO, short for Mars Cube One, was the first interplanetary mission to use a class of mini-spacecraft called CubeSats. The MarCOs - nicknamed EVE and WALL-E, after characters from a Pixar film - served as communications relays during InSight's landing, beaming back data at each stage of its descent to the Martian surface in near-real time, along with InSight's first image. WALL-E sent back stunning images of Mars as well, while EVE performed some simple radio science.

All of this was achieved with experimental technology that cost a fraction of what most space missions do: $18.5 million provided by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which built the CubeSats.

WALL-E was last heard from on Dec. 29; EVE, on Jan. 4. Based on trajectory calculations, WALL-E is currently more than 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) past Mars; EVE is farther, almost 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) past Mars.

The mission team has several theories for why they haven't been able to contact the pair. WALL-E has a leaky thruster. Attitude-control issues could be causing them to wobble and lose the ability to send and receive commands. The brightness sensors that allow the CubeSats to stay pointed at the Sun and recharge their batteries could be another factor. The MarCOs are in orbit around the Sun and will only get farther away as February wears on. The farther they are, the more precisely they need to point their antennas to communicate with Earth.

The MarCOs won't start moving toward the Sun again until this summer. The team will reattempt to contact the CubeSats at that time, though it's anyone's guess whether their batteries and other parts will last that long.

Even if they're never revived, the team considers MarCO a spectacular success.

"This mission was always about pushing the limits of miniaturized technology and seeing just how far it could take us," said Andy Klesh, the mission's chief engineer at JPL. "We've put a stake in the ground. Future CubeSats might go even farther."

A number of the critical spare parts for each MarCO will be used in other CubeSat missions. That includes their experimental radios, antennas and propulsion systems. Several of these systems were provided by commercial vendors, making it easier for other CubeSats to use them as well.

More small spacecraft are on the way. NASA is set to launch a variety of new CubeSats in coming years.

"There's big potential in these small packages," said John Baker, the MarCO program manager at JPL. "CubeSats - part of a larger group of spacecraft called SmallSats - are a new platform for space exploration that is affordable to more than just government agencies."

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7327

 

Edited February 6, 2019 by James Kerman
grammar

[Ultimate Steve]

WALL-E probably turned off his antenna to mess around with his fire extinguisher, and EVE is probably laughing too hard to keep her antenna straight.

[Xd the great]

22 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

WALL-E probably turned off his antenna to mess around with his fire extinguisher, and EVE is probably laughing too hard to keep her antenna straight.

Is WALL-E male or female?

Also: CUBESATS! Gives you 3 months of transmission for a fraction of the cost.

[Nightside]

21 hours ago, Xd the great said:

Is WALL-E male or female?

Also: CUBESATS! Gives you 3 months of transmission for a fraction of the cost.

Robots don’t have genders, even if they are  made to look masculine or feminine. 

[DDE]

On 2/7/2019 at 5:33 AM, Nightside said:

Robots don’t have genders, even if they are  made to look masculine or feminine. 

Actually, voice is a far more unambiguous indicator unless you're building a humanoid platform, where things like gait and hip width become a viable indictor.

And even then, it's deliberate messaging by the designers. It's possible to make a humanoid robot of indeterminate sex... but where's the fun in that, and what's the utilitarian point in that when both sexes respond better to feminine voices?

[James Kerman]

Insight is now providing a daily weather report online.

Quote

This is NASA InSight's first full selfie on Mars. It displays the lander's solar panels and deck. On top of the deck are its science instruments, weather sensor booms and UHF antenna. The selfie was taken on Dec. 6, 2018 (Sol 10).Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The selfie is made up of 11 images which were taken by its Instrument Deployment Camera, located on the elbow of its robotic arm. Those images are then stitched together into a mosaic.

No matter how cold your winter has been, it's probably not as chilly as Mars. Check for yourself: Starting today, the public can get a daily weather report from NASA's InSight lander.

This public tool includes stats on temperature, wind and air pressure recorded by InSight. Sunday's weather was typical for the lander's location during late northern winter: a high of 2 degrees Fahrenheit (-17 degrees Celsius) and low of -138 degrees Fahrenheit (-95 degrees Celsius), with a top wind speed of 37.8 mph (16.9 m/s) in a southwest direction. The tool was developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, with partners at Cornell University and Spain's Centro de Astrobiología. JPL leads the InSight mission.

Through a package of sensors called the Auxiliary Payload Subsystem (APSS), InSight will provide more around-the-clock weather information than any previous mission to the Martian surface. The lander records this data during each second of every sol (a Martian day) and sends it to Earth on a daily basis. The spacecraft is designed to continue that operation for at least the next two Earth years, allowing it to study seasonal changes as well.

The tool will be geeky fun for meteorologists while offering everyone who uses it a chance to be transported to another planet.

"It gives you the sense of visiting an alien place," said Don Banfield of Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, who leads InSight's weather science. "Mars has familiar atmospheric phenomena that are still quite different than those on Earth."

Constantly collecting weather data allows scientists to detect sources of "noise" that could influence readings from the lander's seismometer and heat flow probe, its main instruments. Both are affected by Mars' extreme temperature swings. The seismometer, called the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), is sensitive to air pressure changes and wind, which create movements that could mask actual marsquakes.

"APSS will help us filter out environmental noise in the seismic data and know when we're seeing a marsquake and when we aren't," Banfield said. "By operating continuously, we'll also see a more detailed view of the weather than most surface missions, which usually collect data only intermittently throughout a sol."

APSS includes an air pressure sensor inside the lander and two air temperature and wind sensors on the lander's deck. Under the edge of the deck is a magnetometer, provided by UCLA, which will measure changes in the local magnetic field that could also influence SEIS. It is the first magnetometer ever placed on the surface of another planet.

InSight will provide a unique data set that will complement the weather measurements of other active missions, including NASA's Curiosity rover and orbiters circling the planet. InSight's air temperature and wind sensors are actually refurbished spares originally built for Curiosity's Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS). These two east- and west-facing booms sit on the lander's deck and are calledTemperature and Wind for InSight (TWINS), provided by Spain's Centro de Astrobiología.

TWINS will be used to tell the team when strong winds could interfere with small seismic signals. But it could also be used, along with InSight's cameras, to study how much dust and sand blow around. Scientists don't know how much wind it takes to lift dust in Mars' thin atmosphere, which affects dune formation and dust storms - including planet-encircling dust storms like the one that occurred last year, effectively ending the Opportunity rover's mission.

APSS will also help the mission team learn about dust devils that have left streaks on the planet's surface. Dust devils are essentially low-pressure whirlwinds, so InSight's air pressure sensor can detect when one is near. It's highly sensitive - 10 times more so than equipment on the Viking and Pathfinder landers - enabling the team to study dust devils from hundreds of feet (dozens of meters) away.

"Our data has already shown there are a lot of dust devils at our location," Banfield said. "Having such a sensitive pressure sensor lets us see more of them passing by."

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7337

 

[Nightside]

19 hours ago, James Kerman said:

Insight is now providing a daily weather report online.

 

I saw another article on this today showing strange air pressure spikes at 7am and 7pm, every day.

[Xd the great]

16 minutes ago, Nightside said:

I saw another article on this today showing strange air pressure spikes at 7am and 7pm, every day.

NASA replacing its drones that hold the curtain around Insight

[James Kerman]

52 minutes ago, Nightside said:

I saw another article on this today showing strange air pressure spikes at 7am and 7pm, every day.

Thanks, Mate, I was unaware of the phenomenon.  This information comes from Dr Don Banfield of Cornell University in an interview with ARS.

Quote

...scientists have also found something of a mystery in the pressure data on the surface of Mars. Twice a Martian day, at around local 7am and 7pm, there are hiccups in what otherwise should be a smooth rise and fall in surface pressures. Initially, the scientists believed this effect must be caused by something on the lander, but eventually they were able to rule out a cause due to an instrument anomaly or heating source on InSight.

This feature is repetitive and "slightly strange," said Banfield. It wasn't predicted in any of the global or regional weather models for Mars. Currently, the scientists believe the feature must be some kind of atmospheric wave related to sunrise and sunset on Mars. Perhaps there are downslope air flows moving off steep topography, related to the Sun's movement, that briefly upset the atmospheric changes.

 

[Nightside]

8 minutes ago, James Kerman said:

Thanks, Mate, I was unaware of the phenomenon.  This information comes from Dr Don Banfield of Cornell University in an interview with ARS.

 

Thanks for finding that, I hate link hunting on my phone.

it is interesting how little variance there is day to day.

[tater]

 

[tater]

I can't even dig a hole with a trowel to plant a marigold here in NM without having to move the hole a round a few times to avoid rocks. Kind of amazing that they even got a few cm in before hitting one. Wonder if they can try another spot, or if it's a one-way trip down, only.

[Xd the great]

7 hours ago, tater said:

I can't even dig a hole with a trowel to plant a marigold here in NM without having to move the hole a round a few times to avoid rocks. Kind of amazing that they even got a few cm in before hitting one. Wonder if they can try another spot, or if it's a one-way trip down, only.

The rock turns out to become a wall for alien houses.

[Ignath]

Looks like inSight may have heard it's first Marsquake:

 

[Josh IN SPACE]

https://bgr.com/2019/10/04/insight-mole-mars-lander-nasa/

Through meticulous work, it seems they are attempting to hold the hammer in place with another arm so it can dig, as the soil has shown to be more loose than previously thought. Just incredible, really hope this pays off!

Sorry for the necro, didn't really want to make a whole thread just for this new piece of info regarding InSight if there was already a topic.