This will be the first mission dedicated to digging deep below the Red Planet’s surface to find out what’s shaking on Mars, said NASA in a press release. Insight’s two-hour launch window opens at 4:05 a.m. PT (7:05 a.m. ET) for the May 5 launch date.
Not only will InSight be the first robotic mission to study the deep interior of Mars, it will be the first mission to launch to another planet from the West Coast of the United States, a role that has been reserved for Cape Canaveral in Florida, according to Digital Journal.
Tom Hoffman, the project manager for NASA’s InSight mission from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California says, “If you live in Southern California and the weather is right, you’ll probably have a better view of the launch than I will.” Hoffman says, “I’ll be stuck inside a control room looking at monitors — which is not the best way to enjoy an Atlas 5 on its way to Mars.”
And, if all goes as planned, the 790-pound (358-kilogram) probe will land on Mars November 26, 2018, after a six-month journey, joining five other NASA spacecraft operating on or above the Martian surface.
A close-up look at Insight
Let’s look at the launch vehicle first. It is an United Launch Alliance (ULA) two-stage Atlas V 401 launch rocket that will produce 860,200 pounds (3.8 million newtons) of thrust as it climbs away from its launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base, near Lompoc, California
The nose shroud measures around 13 feet, or 4 meters, in diameter and will jettison from the Atlas 5 rocket approximately four-and-a-half minutes after liftoff.
“After lift-off from Vandenberg’s Space Launch Complex 3, the Atlas V begins a southerly trajectory and climbs out over the Channel Islands off Oxnard,” said Tim Dunn, launch director for the Launch Services Program at the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “If you live on the California Central Coast or south to L.A. and San Diego, be sure to get up early on May 5th, because Atlas V is the gold standard in launch vehicles and it can put on a great show.”
The Centaur second stage will be carrying Insight inside a 40-foot-long payload fairing. Centaur can make multiple burns to deliver payloads to a variety of orbits including Low Earth Orbit, Geostationary Transfer Orbit, and Geostationary Orbit, Having this particular upper stage will give the mission another “first.”
the 1,530-pound (694-kilogram) InSight spacecraft was encapsulated inside the Atlas 5 rocket’s payload fairing April 16. The fully assembled Spacecraft’s fixed solar array wings will provide electricity during the nearly seven-month journey to Mars.
Insight mission’s principal investigator, Bruce Banerdt, told CNN via email that he was “already pretty crazy about Mars” when he was 8 or so, and his excitement about sending a spacecraft there “is really starting to get intense.”
Banerdt added that this mission will also fill the “last gaping hole in NASA’s exploration of Mars,” adding, “We have mapped the surface of the entire planet in terms of visible features, topography, gravity and magnetic fields.”
“We have studied the atmosphere, both globally and at the surface. We have roved around the surface at four different places, studying the geology and piecing together the history of the surface. But until now, the vast regions of the planet deeper than a few miles, or so, (have) been almost completely unknown to us.”
Live televised coverage of the launch will be available at:https://www.nasa.gov/live.
