NASA Plans to Fix Mars Spacecraft Leak Then Launch in 2018
NASA has announced that it will delay the launch of its InSight mission to Mars until May 2018, after discovering a leak in one of the spacecraft’s instruments. The InSight mission, which stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, aims to study the deep interior of the Red Planet using a lander equipped with a seismometer, a heat probe and a radio science experiment.
The leak was detected in a vacuum enclosure that houses the seismometer, which is designed to measure ground movements as small as the diameter of an atom. The leak prevents the seismometer from functioning properly and could compromise the quality of the scientific data. NASA and its partners, the French space agency CNES and the German Aerospace Center DLR, decided to postpone the launch to allow more time to fix the problem and test the instrument.
The InSight mission was originally scheduled to launch in March 2016, during a favorable alignment of Earth and Mars that occurs every 26 months. Missing this launch window means that the mission will have to wait until the next opportunity in May 2018, which will increase the cost of the project by about $150 million, according to NASA.
However, NASA officials said that the delay is worth it, as the InSight mission will provide valuable insights into the formation and evolution of rocky planets, including Earth. “The science goals of InSight are compelling, and the NASA and CNES plans to overcome the technical challenges are sound,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “The quest to understand the interior of Mars has been a longstanding goal of planetary scientists for decades. We’re excited to be back on the path for a launch, now in 2018.”
