Cedars, January 2019

January 2019 8 OFF CAMPUS ‘Touchdown Confirmed’ Lander gives new Insight into geology of Mars by Breanna Beers O n Nov. 26, 2018, at 2:53 p.m., a room full of scientists erupted into cheers. The Mars InSight lander finally com- pleted its six-month journey to touch down on the red planet after six years of active de- velopment. While previous Mars missions typically used parachutes to drift down through the planet’s thin atmosphere, In- Sight had its own set of rockets to slow its descent and precisely position its landing location — an impressive feat, according to physics professor Dr. Steven Gollmer. “The way they were able to land it this time as opposed to other means that they’ve used in the past, it just indicates again there’s just an ongoing progress in our abili- ty to do things with precision and to accom- plish our goals effectively,” Gollmer said. This achievement is especially notable since, depending onMars’ position relative to Earth, it can take between four and 20 min- utes for a radio signal from Earth to reach Mars, so the entire landing had to be prepro- grammed rather than controlled in real time. NASA engineers call the entry-to-landing phase “seven minutes of terror.” “Once something goes into space there’s no way you can fix it,” Gollmer explained. “That’s why the expense for space travel is so large: one, it just costs a lot to move any kind of payload into space, but then also the expectation for reliability is so much greater than what we’d have for, let’s say, a car com- ing off of the assembly line or a refrigerator coming out of a plant.” InSight is scheduled for a two-year mis- sion to explore the geology of Mars, though scientists hope the lander will continue to operate beyond the duration of this mission. For now, InSight is focusing on three main projects: determining whether Mars’ core is molten or solid, analyzing how heat is con- ducted through the planet’s interior, and measuring Mars’ seismic activity. Since Earth’s strong magnetic field is partly due to its liquid outer core, Mars’ extremely weak magnetic field has caused some scientists to speculate that its core may have solidified since the planet’s for- mation. The Rotation and Internal Struc- ture Experiment, or RISE, consists of two antenna on top of the lander that reflect ra- dio waves back to Earth and allow scientists to track the exact location of the lander in space. From this data, they can deduce sub- tle variations in the rotation of Mars over the course of InSight’s two-year mission. “They’re going to have the level of pre- cision to determine how stable the axis of Mars’ rotation is,” Gollmer said. “If it’s a very stable one, that would imply that Mars’ inte- Photo courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech This is NASA InSight’s first full selfie on Mars. It displays the lander’s solar panels and deck. On top of the deck are its science instruments, weather sensor booms and UHF antenna. The selfie is made up of 11 images which were taken by its Instrument Deployment Camera, located on the elbow of its robotic arm. Those images are then stitched together into a mosaic.