[Status check to proceed with terminal count.] There is a moment at the start of every
mission when everything comes together. A moment when years of preparation and
planning are put to the test. [Clear to proceed.] There are no second chances. [You have permission to launch.]
Success or failure is just a heartbeat away.
A spacecraft and it's rocket on the pad fully fueled and ready to launch. [Status check. Go Atlas. Go Centaur.]
In that moment a controlled explosion released with such an intense power
it can propel a spacecraft off the earth and into space for the benefit of all.
We call this moment T-Zero, this is its story.
NASA is about to do something we've never done before. Nestled along the
mountains on California's Central Coast is a little talked about Space Launch
Center known as Vandenberg Air Force Base. From here history is about to be made.
This is the first time we've had an interplanetary launch from Vandenberg
Air Force Base in California. The cool thing about this launch is that we've
got such a capable rocket the Atlas 5, we don't have to launch from Florida.
InSight is gonna be the first time we've had a spacecraft leave Earth's orbit
launching from California. We've actually done studies for it even up two decades
ago but it just comes down to whether or not the mission I had extra propellant
left over and whether there was an operational reason to switch from an
East Coast launch to West Coast. This is just the first time all of it came together.
What we're gonna do is we're gonna unload the spacecraft really
really carefully and then we're going to drive it a couple of miles to the
Astrotech facility where they have a clean room all set up for us. We've got
about two months here. All we got to do is clean it up test it out put the fuel
in the tanks and bolt it on the rocket and off we go to Mars. InSight is NASA's
next groundbreaking mission, literally designed to break ground on Mars using
probes and seismometers insight will listen for Mars quakes and measure how
much heat the planets interior gives off. If we're going to truly understand how
rocky planets like Mars and Earth were created we need to look inside.
It's unlike other missions that we've done in Mars we have a number of orbiters a
number of Landers that we've successfully explored this amazing
planet but this this actually is the first mission where we're really looking
on the inside the inner space of Mars. Sending a science mission to the red
planet is never easy. Landing a probe on the surface is even harder. To accomplish
this, InSight will have to shed its many components
in a matter of minutes bit by bit like peeling an orange until only the lander
is left so the crew stage itself is the critical component that that actually
gets us to Mars there's an aeroshell that absorbs the heat as we re-enter the
atmosphere that aeroshell enables us to go through the the atmosphere of Mars
successfully without getting the inside the lander itself too hot we deploy a
parachute that parachute does two things it really ensures the stability of the
aeroshell as it started to get closer to the surface it also slows down the
spacecraft further until finally we drop out of the combination backshell and
parachute and then we do a propulsive descent down to the surface. We know
water exists on Mars and where there's water there could be signs of life but
we must ensure any organisms we discover weren't simply stowaways from Earth.
This is where the planetary protection team comes into play. Planetary protection is
what we do to responsibly explore other planets and moons in
our solar system in order to do that we need to make sure that we send a clean
spacecraft there. We would hate to get to another planet or moon and think we
discovered life but it was actually something that we brought with us. So we
collect our samples on InSight, any part of inside that's going to land on the
surface of Mars, we bring it back to our lab and we process it using a NASA
procedure. If we run into a situation where you take a sample and it comes
back as having higher number of bacteria than what we want then we make sure that
the engineers go back and clean those surfaces for the whole idea that we
don't want to cloud our ability to potentially find life on another planet
or moon. Lockheed Martin's space of Denver
Colorado built InSight with an extremely efficient design streamlining what needs
to be done at the launch site. They ship the spacecraft to Vandenberg with no
assembly required. Simply check it out, fuel it, test it, encapsulate it and it's
ready for launch. The processing for our spacecraft has been very smooth a lot of
the processing had to do with fueling the spacecraft removing some removed
before flight items everything else was pretty much already installed on the
spacecraft in Denver Colorado before it was shipped here and that's to call a
ship and shoot, which means there's not too much to do except for to fuel the
vehicle and do some last-minute power on checkouts of the onboard computers and
subsystems. These preparations are crucial everything must be working
perfectly before InSight leaves earth. This effort
is designed to ensure a safe arrival and landing following the six-month trip
from Earth to Mars. In the meantime, United Launch Alliance or ULA is busy
at their Launchpad, slick-three, assembling the world's most successful
rocket the Atlas 5. Well I mean we're building a rocket what's not
exciting about that. I'm really excited to be able to launch the first planetary
mission from the west coast first ula stacks their Atlas 5 booster
onto the launch platform. Atlas 5 is powered by the mighty rd-180 rocket
engine. The rd-180 is a powerhouse burning highly refined kerosene known as
RP 1 and liquid oxygen for thrust. For this mission the rd-180 has more than
enough power to get insight off of Earth and heading towards Mars. When the
Boosters fuel is spent the Centaur's second stage kicks in and finishes the
job. Centaur won't actually hit Mars it will fly just past it. Final course
corrections will be done by InSight itself to enter the Martian atmosphere
and land on the surface. Once fueling and testing is complete the team from United
Launch Alliance will encapsulate InSight inside its payload fairing, the shell
that keeps InSight clean and safe during its dangerous ascent to Earth's
atmosphere. We're at the face of the mission where we're encapsulating with
the launch vehicle and the ula team with their fairings now come in and they take
the two halves of the fairings and they make a clamshell
around the spacecraft to help protect it for the environments that we see during
launch and we do that because as we leave the Earth's atmosphere the air and
the molecules in the atmosphere would tear up our spacecraft otherwise the
fairing is there to protect us. With InSight encapsulated in its fairing
it's time to move the payload out to slick-three but this California
coastline comes with its own set of challenges
the surrounding marine layer can swallow up a launch pad
reducing visibility to under a couple hundred feet. So right now it's on the
transport vehicle and it's ready to roll and we'll be rolling out around to a
2:00 a.m. at that point we'll have a convoy that drives very slowly from the
payload processing facility out to the slick-three Atlas 5 facility, and once it
arrives we'll hoist the encapsulated spacecraft up to the top of the mobile
service tower and place it on the launch vehicle. This morning when it was sitting
on the truck and they put the crane on it they started lifted up that's the
last time this the spacecraft's ever going to feel the ground of Earth.
I'm just just kind of jumping out of my skin this is so exciting we're getting
so close to launch and it's been a long long road. This has been a challenging
program I mean we've had a lot of technical issues to overcome so we
actually had to stand down back in 2015 but since then we've gotten it all
together and things been going so smoothly the last year we really feel
really confident about this launch. We got it on top of the rocket
we're going to blast it off in just a few days and when it gets to Mars and
lands finally we'll have solid ground under its feet again and get to work on
probing the depths of Mars. But InSight won't be traveling alone hitching a ride
to the Red Planet are a pair of CubeSats, twin satellites called Marco A and
Marco B. So Marco is a dual payload riding as a
secondary mission on its way to Mars. So Marco is a pair of CubeSats and CubeSats
are really small spacecraft they're essentially the size of a large cereal
box about this big. It's going to be relaying telemetry from the entry
descent and landing of InSight back to earth in near real time. After InSight is
deployed on orbit and is heading to Mars Centaur, which is behind me, injects Marco A
into orbit and it will slowly rotate itself so that Marco B ejects 180
degrees on the other side of the vehicle. But Marco is a technology demonstration
mission it's actually one of the smallest spacecraft we've ever launched
interplanetary space it's the first interplanetary CubeSat so in of itself
it has all of these technology that we've never tested in deep space before.
So if Marco works this time one of the cool things that we could do is actually
replicate that system and fly it with other missions in the future and whether
you go into Mars or Venus or it may be even further away to an asteroid and you
could think of it as bring your own telecom relay. So everything went well
today with the lift of the spacecraft and mate onto the rocket it started off
very foggy and windy and right now it's a beautiful day this
typical California weather and now we're ready to go to Mars.
But just as Twilight falls across the base the fog returns cloaking the coast
with a bone-chilling mist that will last until daybreak. As we get closer to T-Zero
liftoff time a number of activities have to happen. There's a mobile service tower
around the Atlas five rocket and the InSight spacecraft is on top of the
rocket enclosed in the payload fairing so we're gonna back that mobile service
tower away from the rocket to leave it exposed just beside the umbilical tower.
[Engineer proceed with roll to park position. Roger MST shall be
closed in park position. Roger.]
The final launchpad preparation is underway once the mobile service tower
is rolled back InSight and Atlas 5 are just hours away from T-Zero. Basking in the
searchlights of the West Coast facility they are presented with the glamour of a
Hollywood premier fitting treatment for such an historical mission
So there's a lot of excitement within the NASA launch team about the InSight
mission first time we're going to launch from the California coast going to Mars
and what is really exciting to the team is this is the culmination of a lot of
work. The teams have been working on this mission for over five years and today is
the day that they will see all of their hard work rewarded.
[Status check to proceed with terminal count Atlas systems propulsion go
hydraulics go pneumatics go water go Centaur systems propulsion go
pneumatics go LH-2 go facility go reigns coordinator clear to proceed
launch director. LC you have permission to launch go Atlas go Center go InSight.
Proceeding with the count. We're at t-minus eight seven six five four three
two, one, zero.
And liftoff of the Atlas-5 launching the first interplanetary mission on the west coast and NASA's
InSight the first outer space robotic explorer to study the interior of Mars.
Seconds after liftoff the rocket punches through the marine layer lighting the
night sky for miles visible all the way down to Los Angeles. An infrared camera
showing the long tail of the exhaust plume captures some of the ascent as
well as an onboard ascent camera. And we're nearing booster engine cutoff.
We're back to 4.6 G's in preparation blue space cooldown has completed.
Shutdown looks good. Stage separation. We have box and fuel prestart
between two purge firing, the RCS is underway. We have ignition and full
thrust and we have indication of payload
fairing jettison it looks like a good sep. And the payload fairing that was
encapsulating the InSight spacecraft has been jettisoned. The RL10C engine the
second stage of the Centaur continues to burn. An hour and 28 minutes into the
mission the InSight spacecraft and the Marco twins are deployed from the Centaur
upper stage beginning the long voyage to Mars where InSight will go to
work shedding light on secrets hidden in the depths of the Red Planet.
T-minus three - engine starts - two, one