Waspie_Dwarf Posted May 5, 2018 #1 Share Posted May 5, 2018 NASA's InSight Mars mission has launched from Vandenburg Air Force Base, California on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V. The first phase of the launch has been successful and InSight is in a parking orbit around the Earth 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waspie_Dwarf Posted May 5, 2018 Author #2 Share Posted May 5, 2018 Lift off of InSight InSight, MarCO Cubesats Separate from Atlas V Centaur Upper Stage 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seti42 Posted May 6, 2018 #3 Share Posted May 6, 2018 Cool! I hope every goes as planned. I honestly had no idea of the existence of InSight. I probably should follow space exploration news more closely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qxcontinuum Posted May 6, 2018 #4 Share Posted May 6, 2018 1 billion dollars ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pallidin Posted May 6, 2018 #5 Share Posted May 6, 2018 4 hours ago, qxcontinuum said: 1 billion dollars ? That's "total mission cost", not the cost of the rover itself. I don't know the actual physical cost of the rover itself. Probably tens or hundreds of millions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pallidin Posted May 6, 2018 #6 Share Posted May 6, 2018 For example, all parts of the rover are specially "hardened" to deal with the enormous stresses of the total flight mission. The computer chips are not normal either. They are stress, heat and radiation hardened. Even the circuit boards they are placed on are very special... hardened as above. All the physical structural parts of the rover... it's shell, wheels, extension arms, etc. are specially made through highly expensive materials (some composite), all of which go through extensive acoustic and x-Ray analysis. When finished, the rover and lander assemblies undergo an expensive "de-contamination" so as not to introduce earth microbes on Mars. It really is a serious undertaking. And very expensive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waspie_Dwarf Posted May 6, 2018 Author #7 Share Posted May 6, 2018 1 hour ago, pallidin said: For example, all parts of the rover are specially "hardened" to deal with the enormous stresses of the total flight mission. The computer chips are not normal either. They are stress, heat and radiation hardened. Even the circuit boards they are placed on are very special... hardened as above. All the physical structural parts of the rover... it's shell, wheels, extension arms, etc. are specially made through highly expensive materials (some composite), all of which go through extensive acoustic and x-Ray analysis. When finished, the rover and lander assemblies undergo an expensive "de-contamination" so as not to introduce earth microbes on Mars. It really is a serious undertaking. And very expensive. Except that there are no wheels. InSight is a lander not a rover, I think you are thinking of the Mars 2020 mission. You are correct on many of the other details. As well as the actual construction costs of the lander, the price will include cost of the launch vehicle ($109 million), the costs of ground support and control during the mission, the cost of using the Deep Space Network to track the mission, and many other sundries. The mission also incurred an addition $150 million cost when it had to be delayed and stored for two years after the failure of a French made instrument just prior to the original 2016 launch date. These craft are one off, there is no production line. Each component is individually made and individually tested. All that and it still costs considerably less than qxcontinuum's false inaccurate claim, the cost of the mission is actually $830 million not one billion. Compare that to an F-35 Lightning II, they are mass produced and still cost $100 million each... and that is just production costs with no additional running costs. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pallidin Posted May 6, 2018 #8 Share Posted May 6, 2018 Excellent clarification from Waspie... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qxcontinuum Posted May 7, 2018 #9 Share Posted May 7, 2018 17 hours ago, Waspie_Dwarf said: . All that and it still costs considerably less than qxcontinuum's false inaccurate claim, the cost of the mission is actually $830 million not one billion. The one billion is from the article listed on this very forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waspie_Dwarf Posted May 24, 2018 Author #10 Share Posted May 24, 2018 InSight Steers Toward Mars Quote NASA's InSight lander has made its first course correction toward Mars. InSight, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is the first mission dedicated to exploring the deep interior of Mars. The lander is currently encapsulated in a protective aeroshell, which launched on top of an Atlas V 401 rocket on May 5 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Central California. Yesterday, the spacecraft fired its thrusters for the first time to change its flight path. This activity, called a trajectory correction maneuver, will happen a maximum of six times to guide the lander to Mars. Read More: NASA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waspie_Dwarf Posted June 2, 2018 Author #11 Share Posted June 2, 2018 NASA CubeSats Steer Toward Mars Quote NASA has achieved a first for the class of tiny spacecraft known as CubeSats, which are opening new access to space. Over the past week, two CubeSats called MarCO-A and MarCO-B have been firing their propulsion systems to guide themselves toward Mars. This process, called a trajectory correction maneuver, allows a spacecraft to refine its path to Mars following launch. Both CubeSats successfully completed this maneuver; NASA's InSight spacecraft just completed the same process on May 22. Read More: NASA/JPL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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