[meteorite-list] NASA Evaluates Four Candidate Sites for 2016 Mars Mission (InSight)

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2013 12:20:06 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201309041920.r84JK6jR021388_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

September 4, 2013

Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov

Guy Webster
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-6278
guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov
     
RELEASE 13-274
     
NASA Evaluates Four Candidate Sites for 2016 Mars Mission

NASA has narrowed to four the number of potential landing sites for the
agency's next mission to the surface of Mars, a 2016 lander to study the
planet's interior.

The stationary Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and
Heat Transport (InSight) lander is scheduled to launch in March 2016 and land
on Mars six months later. It will touch down at one of four sites selected in
August from a field of 22 candidates. All four semi-finalist spots lie near
each other on an equatorial plain in an area of Mars called Elysium Planitia.

"We picked four sites that look safest," said geologist Matt Golombek of
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. Golombek is
leading the site-selection process for InSight. "They have mostly smooth
terrain, few rocks and very little slope."

Scientists will focus two of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter cameras on
the semi-finalists in the coming months to gain data they will use to select
the best of the four sites well before InSight is launched.

The mission will investigate processes that formed and shaped Mars and will
help scientists better understand the evolution of our inner solar system's
rocky planets, including Earth. Unlike previous Mars landings, what is on the
surface in the area matters little in the choice of a site except for safety
considerations.

"This mission's science goals are not related to any specific location on
Mars because we're studying the planet as a whole, down to its core," said
Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal investigator at JPL. "Mission safety and
survival are what drive our criteria for a landing site."

Each semifinalist site is an ellipse measuring 81 miles (130 kilometers) from
east to west and 17 miles (27 kilometers) from north to south. Engineers
calculate the spacecraft will have a 99-percent chance of landing within that
ellipse, if targeted for the center.

Elysium is one of three areas on Mars that meet two basic engineering
constraints for InSight. One requirement is being close enough to the equator
for the lander's solar array to have adequate power at all times of the year.
Also, the elevation must be low enough to have sufficient atmosphere above
the site for a safe landing. The spacecraft will use the atmosphere for
deceleration during descent.

All four semifinalist sites, as well as the rest of the 22 of the candidate
sites studied, are in Elysium Planitia. The only other two areas of Mars
meeting the requirements of being near the equator at low elevation, Isidis
Planitia and Valles Marineris, are too rocky and windy. Valles Marineris also
lacks any swath of flat ground large enough for a safe landing.

InSight also needs penetrable ground, so it can deploy a heat-flow probe that
will hammer itself 3 yards to 5 yards into the surface to monitor heat coming
from the planet's interior. This tool can penetrate through broken-up surface
material or soil, but could be foiled by solid bedrock or large rocks.

"For this mission, we needed to look below the surface to evaluate candidate
landing sites,"Golombek said.

InSight's heat probe must penetrate the ground to the needed depth, so
scientists studied Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter images of large rocks near
Martian craters formed by asteroid impacts. Impacts excavate rocks from the
subsurface, so by looking in the area surrounding craters, the scientists
could tell if the subsurface would have probe-blocking rocks lurking beneath
the soil surface.

InSight also will deploy a seismometer on the surface and will use its radio
for scientific measurements.

JPL manages InSight for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The
French space agency, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, and the German
Aerospace Center are contributing instruments to the mission. Lockheed Martin
Space Systems, Denver, is building the spacecraft.

InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, which NASA's Marshall Space
Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages. InSight's team includes U.S. and
international co-investigators from universities, industry and government
agencies.

For more information about InSight, visit:

http://insight.jpl.nasa.gov

Additional information on the Discovery Program is available at:

http://discovery.nasa.gov

- end-
Received on Wed 04 Sep 2013 03:20:06 PM PDT