If you were paying attention to the news last year, I don’t think it was possible to miss
the media hype about the NASA InSight mission to Mars.
But after it successfully landed, there’s hardly been any mention of it since.
So, what were its mission goals on the Martian surface?
And has it achieved anything now that it’s been there for almost a year?
I’m Alex McColgan, and you’re watching Astrum, and together we will find out exactly
what InSight has discovered on Mars so far.
Let’s begin with a quick recap of the mission.
InSight launched from Earth in May 2018, and landed on Mars in November of the same year.
Unlike a lot of the other NASA missions to Mars, this is a robotic lander, not a rover.
In fact, it shares a lot of similarities and technology with a previous NASA mission called
Phoenix, although they had quite different science goals.
InSight’s main objective is to investigate the seismology of the planet, whereas Phoenix
was more interested in the past and present habitability of Mars.
The last you probably saw of the InSight mission was this image, the first image InSight sent
back to Earth.
But there have been a lot of interesting things that have taken place since then, so let’s
see exactly what happened after it landed.
The first thing InSight did was send back signals to Earth that it had touched down
safely, and sent the famous first image.
As you can see, a lot of dust had been kicked up by the landing, as InSight used descent
rockets to slow its fall.
A camera pointed under the lander reveals the effects of the rockets, which carved out
mini craters under the craft.
InSight was programmed to wait a few hours for the dust to settle before deploying its
two circular solar panels, as dust settling on the panels themselves would affect the
efficiency.
InSight quickly began collecting data, even before deploying any of the science instruments.
The first thing it recorded was the Martian wind, picked up by vibrations sensed by the
seismometer still on the lander.
And this is what is sounded like, although I should note that you will probably either
need a subwoofer or headphones to hear this.
This has not been sped up, these literally are the vibrations caused by Martian wind
going over the solar panels of the lander, the frequency of the vibrations converted
to audio.
For the benefit of those who can’t hear it, here is it pitched up two octaves.
InSight can also detect changes in air pressure.
Here is the air pressure changing as wind blows across the lander.
This audio has been sped up by a factor of 100 for it to be within human hearing range.
What is fascinating though is that we don’t have to just imagine the wind passing by InSight,
as it was also able to capture footage of water ice clouds passing by overhead, visibly
showing the direction of the wind.
Yes, although Mars is currently a barren wasteland, there is still a tiny amount of water vapour
in the atmosphere.
Almost immediately after landing, InSight was taking 3D images of its surrounding area
in order to find the perfect spot to place the seismometer.
Based on those 3D images, NASA recreated this area as accurately as possible, even going
as far as using the Hololens augmented reality headset to match up the surface of Mars with
the environment they were recreating.
The seismometer is extremely sensitive, and had to be placed directly on the surface,
avoiding any rocks that would affect the placement of it and of its windshield.
As you’ve already heard, wind is easily detectable by the seismometer, so the windshield
had to fully enclose it to protect it from potentially contaminated measurements.
Once the go ahead was given, InSight carefully used its robotic arm to place the seismometer
on the surface of the planet.
From there, it could detect the faintest vibrations, from Marsquakes to meteors impacting the surface
close by.
But what is the point of this?
Well, when a specific part of the surface of a planet vibrates, a ripple propagates
through the planet’s interior.
Listening out for the echoes, scientists can determine the internal structure of Mars.
They would then correlate the data collected with the other main scientific instrument
onboard InSight, namely the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package, which is a combination
of a drill and a hammer with a very accurate temperature sensor to measure how efficiently
heats transfers through the Martian core.
The “mole”, as they call it, tried to dig 5m down, taking temperature readings every
10cm, extrapolating these readings to estimate the thickness of the Martian crust.
Unfortunately, the mole got stuck only 30cm down, and is currently unable to recover.
It probably hit a very hard rock, or the soil simply didn’t provide enough friction, which
tilted the mole before it had fully exited its housing, getting stuck in this position.
Again, ground based teams tried to replicate the problem and look for a safe way to pick
up the housing around the mole and use the robotic arm to straighten its course.
Putting their plan to action on Mars, the operation was successful, the housing was
lifted off, exposing the mole, but no further progress has been made as of this moment.
Latest plans are to try and use the robotic arm to push down on the soil right next to
the mole, hopefully giving it the friction it needs to start digging deeper, if friction
really was the problem.
Luckily, the seismometer was more successful.
In April of this year, it detected its first Marsquake.
And this is what is sounded like.
Again, the vibrations have been sped up by a factor of 60 as the frequency would not
be audible to the human ear.
While data like this doesn’t need to be converted to audio for scientists to use it,
it is useful for the lay person so they can better grasp what is going on.
What you will notice though is how sensitive this seismometer is.
Even under the wind shield, it still picks up vibrations caused by the wind, and even
the robotic arm moving can be easily detected even though it’s a few meters away.
Lastly, InSight is acting a little like a weather station on Mars, with instruments
detecting wind, air pressure, and air temperature.
As you can see, even at the equator Mars is a chilly -25c at its warmest at the moment,
bottoming out at -100c.
We are also seeing some gusts of up to 60kph and low air pressures, about 6mbar compared
to Earth’s 1bar.
So, there you have it!
As you can tell, InSight has had some ups and downs, but the overall health of the lander
is good, and it will hopefully be collecting data for a while yet, assuming not too much
dust settles on its panels.
This data will provide a more and more accurate 3D model of the interior of Mars, providing
evidence of what Mars once looked like and how it formed in the first place.
And if the mole can get functioning again, we’ll be able to get data for the heat flow
under the surface too to find out if there really is an active mantle under the surface
still or not.
So, keep an eye out for this mission in the coming months and years!
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Thanks for watching!
If you enjoy Mars, check out this playlist of other Mars videos here.
And of course, a big thank you to my Patreons and members that support the channel.
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All the best, and see you next time.