Mars InSight - landing on 26 Nov 2018

5MPH is much better than 200 mph.

djs said:

I say this about my rockets sometimes

Is/Was there some onboard video of it landing?

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I don't think so, the first picture from the lander itself only came after the lander was on the surface. But they are hoping that the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which was aimed at Insight, might have gotten some shots of the lander under parachute, etc.

Most of these missions have a down pointing camera operating during descent. Usually they show the heat shield separation and a view of the approaching surface. This is low priority data and usually retrieved days later, though sometimes thumbnails come first. I would be surprised if Insight didn't have such a cam onboard, to see the area from above eventually.

ever wonder what martians might think about earthlings dropping stuff on mars...oh look, here comes another one.
Rex

Watched the streamed live landing cast. Awesome show, as these things are when they are successful.

Was gratified that within a few minutes major news websites (on various sides of the political fence, equally... yea!) announced the major story. But but 9:30 it was relegated to minor story in favor of political and celebrity news stories which grabbed the headlines again. All I wanted to know was, did the solar panels deploy properly, as word of this was supposed to be available before 9 pm. Can't find anything about it, even on the NASA page. Sigh.

Catching Rays...
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7294

Thanks for the solar panel deployment confirmation link!

cwbullet said:

I hope we land a man Mars before 2020.

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i hope we can get bank camera pictures from 20 feet as clear as pictures from 150 million miles away by then,too!

Raw images as they are released:

https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/multi...taken+desc&per_page=50&page=0&mission=insight

Should be getting more pics over the next several days. Lots of post-landing “housekeeping” activities on the timeline recently.

HiRISE (NASA)
@HiRISE

MRO’s attempt to image InSight on the parachute during its descent was unsuccessful.

The geometry was more challenging than the Phoenix & Curiosity images, and the uncertainty in timing and the limitations on MRO’s ability to rapidly pan the camera across the scene motivated the HiRISE team to use a camera setting which unfortunately saturated the detector.

12:15 PM - 28 Nov 2018

Another "hole in one" as another of our Mars landers lands in a shallow crater.

NASA's Martian quake sensor InSight lands at slight angle
December 1, 2018

https://phys.org/news/2018-12-nasa-martian-quake-sensor-insight.html

"The vehicle sits slightly tilted (about 4 degrees) in a shallow dust- and sand-filled impact crater known as a 'hollow,'" NASA said in a statement.
InSight was engineered to operate on a surface with an inclination up to 15 degrees.

Therefore, experts are hopeful that its two main instruments—a quake sensor and self-hammering mole to measure heat below the surface—will work as planned.

NASA's Mars InSight flexes its arm
December 7, 2018

https://phys.org/news/2018-12-nasa-mars-insight-flexes-arm.html

"Today we can see the first glimpses of our workspace," said Bruce Banerdt, the mission's principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "By early next week, we'll be imaging it in finer detail and creating a full mosaic."

Another camera, called the Instrument Context Camera, is located under the lander's deck. It will also offer views of the workspace, though the view won't be as pretty.

"We had a protective cover on the Instrument Context Camera, but somehow dust still managed to get onto the lens," said Tom Hoffman of JPL, InSight's project manager. "While this is unfortunate, it will not affect the role of the camera, which is to take images of the area in front of the lander where our instruments will eventually be placed."

More images from InSight's arm were scheduled to come down this past weekend. However, imaging was momentarily interrupted, resuming the following day. During the first few weeks in its new home, InSight has been instructed to be extra careful, so anything unexpected will trigger what's called a fault. Considered routine, it causes the spacecraft to stop what it is doing and ask for help from operators on the ground.
"We did extensive testing on Earth. But we know that everything is a little different for the lander on Mars, so faults are not unusual," Hoffman said. "They can delay operations, but we're not in a rush. We want to be sure that each operation that we perform on Mars is safe, so we set our safety monitors to be fairly sensitive initially."

Spacecraft engineers had already factored extra time into their estimates for instrument deployment to account for likely delays caused by faults. The mission's primary mission is scheduled for two Earth years, or one Mars year - plenty of time to gather data from the Red Planet's surface.



Media telecon + visuals. Start at 15:31:

Mars InSight lander seen in first images from space
December 14, 2018

https://phys.org/news/2018-12-mars-insight-lander-images-space.html

On Nov. 26, NASA's InSight mission knew the spacecraft touched down within an 81-mile-long (130-kilometer-long) landing ellipse on Mars. Now, the team has pinpointed InSight's exact location using images from HiRISE, a powerful camera onboard another NASA spacecraft, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The InSight lander, its heat shield and parachute were spotted by HiRISE (which stands for High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) in one set of images last week on Dec. 6, and again on Tuesday, Dec. 11. The lander, heat shield and parachute are within 1,000 feet (several hundred meters) of one another on Elysium Planitia, the flat lava plain selected as InSight's landing location.

Heat shield:




Back shell and parachute:



Lander:



Lander position in target ellipse:

Rex R said:

ever wonder what martians might think about earthlings dropping stuff on mars...oh look, here comes another one.
Rex

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I remember a radio Sci fi story about an alien ship with 150 on board landing on earth, communicating with humans on way down. Humans guided it to an open field.

Last communication from aliens, “you guided us into an ocean and we are drowning!”

Turned out ship landed in a puddle. There was some miscommunication on scale......

Be kinda bad if our rovers land and wipe out whole cities.....

Seismometer in place:





Wind and thermal shield to cover it:

https://mars.nasa.gov/internal_resources/277/