MONITORING DESK
\nWASHINGTON
\nNASA is counting down to a nail-biting touchdown Monday of the $993 million Mars InSight, the first spacecraft to listen for quakes and study the inner workings of another rocky planet.
\nNo one is on board the spacecraft, which launched nearly seven months ago and has traveled some 300 million miles (482 million kilometers).
\nBut part of its mission is to inform efforts to one day send human explorers to the Red Planet, which NASA hopes to do by the 2030s.
\nThe lander is the first to reach Mars since 2012, when NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover touched down to scour the surface and analyze rocks for signs that life forms may once have inhabited Earth\u2019s neighbor, now a frigid and dry planet.
\nInSight must survive tense entry into Mars\u2019 atmosphere, traveling at a speed of 12,300 miles (19,800 kilometers) per hour and swiftly slowing to just five mph (eight kph).
\nThis entry, descent and landing phase begins at 11:47 am in California (1947 GMT) — and is only half-jokingly referred to at NASA as \u201cSix and a Half Minutes of Terror.\u201d
\nOf 43 missions launched toward Mars, only 18 have made it intact — a success rate of around 40 percent. All those that made it came from the United States.
\n\u201cGoing to Mars is really, really hard,\u201d said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the NASA science mission directorate.
\n\u201cThe exciting part is we are building on the success of the best team that has ever landed on this planet, which is the NASA team with its contractors and its collaborators.\u201d
\n– French seismometer –
\nThe name InSight is derived from \u201cInterior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport.\u201d
\nThe spacecraft itself stands about waist high, at 3.5 feet (one meter), and once its solar arrays are deployed they will span 20 feet.
\nFully fueled, InSight weighs more than 800 pounds (360 kg), about the same as a Harley Davidson motorcycle.
\nIts central instrument is a quake-sensing seismometer that was made by the French Space Agency (CNES).
\n\u201cThis is the only NASA mission until now which is conceived around a foreign-made instrument,\u201d Jean-Yves Le Gall, president of CNES, told AFP.
\n\u201cSo it\u2019s a mission that is fundamentally for the United States, for France and for improving our understanding of Mars.\u201d
\nThe six quake sensors on board are so sensitive they should reveal the smallest tremors on Mars, such as the faint pull of its moon Phobos, impacts from meteors, and possibly evidence of volcanic activity.
\nSeismology has taught humanity much about the formation of Earth some 4.5 billion years ago, but much of the Earth-based evidence has been lost to the recycling of the crust, driven by plate tectonics. This process doesn\u2019t exist on Mars.
\nThe spacecraft also has a self-hammering probe that can burrow as deep as 10-16 feet (3-5 meters), offering the first precise measurement of below-ground temperatures on Mars and how much heat escapes from its interior.
\nIts landing site is flat area called Elysium Planitia, which NASA has called \u201cthe biggest parking lot on Mars.\u201d
\nThe lander must set itself down upright. And then, another critical step is for the solar arrays to deploy, since the lander\u2019s one-year mission will be fully solar-powered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MONITORING DESK WASHINGTON NASA is counting down to a nail-biting touchdown Monday of the $993 million Mars InSight, the first spacecraft to listen for quakes and study the inner workings of another rocky planet. No one is on board the spacecraft, which launched nearly seven months ago and has traveled some 300 million miles (482 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36879,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-36867","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n