Photo: NASA
The May launch of the NASA InSight mission to Mars will be the first interplanetary machine the space agency has ever sent to the stars from the West Coast. To prepare the public for the historic event, scientists and engineers working on the mission have taken to the road.
Officially called Mars InSight Roadshow, the caravan will stop over the following months in several locations along the coast, spanning from the Turtle Bay Exploration Park in the North and ending in Los Angeles in the South. The tour starts on March 30 and is scheduled to end on May 19.
InSight, an acronym for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is meant to study Mars' deep interior using seismology and other geophysical measurements. Considering the fact that the Sunny State is earthquake central in the U.S., NASA’s scientists will take advantage of the tour and try to make comparisons between the earthquakes and the marsquakes (yes, that's now the movement of the ground is called on Mars).
Visitors to the venues where NASA would present the mission will be able to talks with NASA scientists and engineers, explore the interior of the planet via models, and even see panoramas of Earth’s sister ball of dirt through virtual reality headsets.
The difference between the lander to be used on this year’s mission and the existing or planned rovers for Martian missions is that InSight would land and then stay put for as long as it can, using an ultra-sensitive seismometer, a heat-flow probe, and other instruments to scan the interior of the Red Planet.
The immobile instrument platform was built back in 2010 and was initially planned to travel to Mars in 2016. Because of a failure to one of the instruments, the launch was cancelled.
The launch of the mission is not exactly known. The launch window opens on May 5 for the Vandenberg Air Force Base.
InSight, an acronym for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is meant to study Mars' deep interior using seismology and other geophysical measurements. Considering the fact that the Sunny State is earthquake central in the U.S., NASA’s scientists will take advantage of the tour and try to make comparisons between the earthquakes and the marsquakes (yes, that's now the movement of the ground is called on Mars).
Visitors to the venues where NASA would present the mission will be able to talks with NASA scientists and engineers, explore the interior of the planet via models, and even see panoramas of Earth’s sister ball of dirt through virtual reality headsets.
The difference between the lander to be used on this year’s mission and the existing or planned rovers for Martian missions is that InSight would land and then stay put for as long as it can, using an ultra-sensitive seismometer, a heat-flow probe, and other instruments to scan the interior of the Red Planet.
The immobile instrument platform was built back in 2010 and was initially planned to travel to Mars in 2016. Because of a failure to one of the instruments, the launch was cancelled.
The launch of the mission is not exactly known. The launch window opens on May 5 for the Vandenberg Air Force Base.
Google News