NASA begins testing InSight, next Mars lander, for 2016 mission

By Jamie Lendino

NASA has had a remarkable record when it comes to successful missions on the Red Planet, dating back to 1976 with Viking 1 and 2, Pathfinder and Sojourner in 1997, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers in 2004, and Curiosity‘s crazy ‘7 minutes of terror’ landing in 2012. Each time, the spacecraft rovers are orders of magnitude more sophisticated, and two of the last three rovers are still doing science. Now NASA’s set to do it all over again come March 2016 with the InSight spacecraft, which will launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and land on Mars roughly six months later.

Once on the surface, the mission is scheduled to last two years — 720 days, or 700 sols — and begin delivering science data in October 2016.

“Today, our robotic scientific explorers are paving the way, making great progress on the journey to Mars,” said Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, in a statement. “Together, humans and robotics will pioneer Mars and the solar system.”

InSight will be as large as a car, and instead of looking for signs of life or studying surface rock composition, it’s directed at learning more about the interior of Mars. The name is an unwieldy acronym that reflects that: Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport. Currently, NASA has begun testing the craft’s ability to operate in and survive deep space travel, as well as the famously harsh conditions on the surface of the Red Planet.

Mars InSight lander, labeled (artist concept)

The testing phase will last about seven months. During that time, NASA will expose the lander to extreme temperatures, vacuum-space conditions with near-zero air pressure, and emulated Martian surface conditions. Engineering teams will also simulate the launch procedure and examine different parts of the craft for electronic interference.

“The assembly of InSight went very well and now it’s time to see how it performs,” said Stu Spath, InSight program manager at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, in the same statement. “The environmental testing regimen is designed to wring out any issues with the spacecraft so we can resolve them while it’s here on Earth. This phase takes nearly as long as assembly, but we want to make sure we deliver a vehicle to NASA that will perform as expected in extreme environments.”

Once testing is completed early next year, NASA will begin setting up the launch itself ahead of the March target date. “It’s great to see the spacecraft put together in its launch configuration,” said InSight Project Manager Tom Hoffman at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. “Many teams from across the globe have worked long hours to get their elements of the system delivered for these tests. There still remains much work to do before we are ready for launch, but it is fantastic to get to this critical milestone.”

For more about the mission, check out NASA’s dedicated InSight page.