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NASA Evaluates Four Candidate Sites for 2016 Mars Mission

September 04, 2013

 

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 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 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 .

 

Guy Webster 818-354-6278

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

 

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726

NASA Headquarters, Washington

dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

 

2013-269

 

 

 

NASA's next lander to dig into Mars

Written by

Dan Vergano

USA TODAY

 

This Mars mission promises to be a total bore. NASA has announced it has selected four possible landing sites most notable for being smooth, flat and barren for a mission to the Red Planet.

 

Scheduled for a 2016 launch and landing, the space agency's Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) lander will bore into one of four sites, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., announced Wednesday.

 

"Safe and boring is our motto for the landing on this mission," says JPL's Bruce Banerdt, principal science investigator for the mission. "What we are really interested in is the interior of the planet, not the surface."

 

After landing, the mission will explore under the surface of Mars using a probe that will hammer itself 12 to 15 feet deep under the resolutely uninteresting landing site eventually selected for the mission.

 

All four potential landing sites are located on the equatorial plain on Mars called Elysium Planitia, a good site for solar power panels needed for the mission. Two mission instruments will measure seismic activity and, using the probe, subsurface heat flow in the interior of Mars in a bid to better understand the composition and formation of the planet, such as whether its iron core is solid or still molten.

 

"Mars is fairly active geologically," Banerdt says, predicting the mission will detect a few Mars quakes as well. Landing on a smooth, flat, and decidedly dull spot, he says, will let the mission bore into the planet without complications and ensure a safer landing.

 

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY. All rights reserved.

 

 

SPACE.com

NASA Studying 4 Landing Site Options for 2016 Mars Mission

by Tariq Malik, Managing Editor   |   September 04, 2013 04:14pm ET

 

NASA is weighing candidate landing sites for its next mission to the surface of Mars, a three-legged probe that will study the Red Planet's core in 2016.

 

The space agency has four potential landing sites in mind for the new InSight Mars lander. The spacecraft is slated to launch in March 2016 and land on the Red Planet six months later.

 

"We picked four sites that look safest," geologist Matt Golombek of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. "They have mostly smooth terrain, few rocks and very little slope." [NASA's Mars InSight Lander Mission in Pictures]

 

NASA's InSight mission is a $425 million expedition to determine if the core of Mars is liquid or solid, and why the planet's crust appears to lack tectonic plates like those found on Earth. The probe's name is short for Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport.

 

Golombek is leading NASA's site-selection process for the Mars InSight mission. Each of the four potential InSight landing sites is near one another in an area of the equatorial region of Mars called Elysium Planitia.

 

On a NASA-issued map, the InSight landing site candidates appear to be clustered in a zone north of Gale Crater — where the huge Curiosity rover landed in 2012 — and to the northwest of Gusev Crater, where the smaller Spirit rover landed in 2004. NASA will now use its powerful Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in orbit around the Red Planet to further study the potential landing sites and eventually make a final decision.

 

"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," the mission's principal investigator, Bruce Banerdt of JPL, said in a statement. "Mission safety and survival are what drive our criteria for a landing site."

 

The Elysium Planitia region of Mars was chosen because it promises the best chances of success for InSight's mission to probe the interior of Mars, NASA officials said.

 

InSight is equipped with a heat-flow probe, which it will hammer into the surface of Mars to a depth of between 9 and 15 feet (2.7 to 4.5 meters). But the probe can only hammer into Martian dirt and broken-up surface material, not hard bedrock. InSight also carries a seismometer and radio to conduct experiments. Scientists hope the mission will help them better understand how rocky planets form.

 

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

 

InSight also needs a landing site near the Mars equator to ensure there will be enough sunlight for its solar arrays throughout the Martian year. The landing site must be covered with an atmosphere thick enough to support the spacecraft's deceleration during landing.

 

The four landing site finalists for InSight were selected in August from a larger field of 22 potential candidates. Each of the four sites is an ellipse that measures about 81 miles (130 kilometers) long from east to west, and about 17 miles (27 km) wide from north to south.

 

NASA estimates suggest InSight should have a 99 percent chance of landing within its chosen ellipse if the mission targets the ellipse's center. Mission scientists also considered portions of Valles Marineris, the famed "Grand Canyon of Mars," and a region dubbed Isidis Planitia for the InSight landing, but those areas were ultimately considered too rocky, windy or uneven to ensure a successful landing.

 

The InSight mission is one of several Mars missions planned by NASA. The U.S. space agency will launch a new Mars orbiter, called Maven, later this year to study the planet's atmosphere. NASA is also developing a new Mars rover, which will be based on the Curiosity rover design, to launch in 2020. India's first Mars orbiter is slated to launch in October of this year, while the European Space Agency plans to launch a new Mars orbiter and rover in upcoming years under its ExoMars program. 

 

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