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NASA's Newest Mars Mission is Launched


Waspie_Dwarf

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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

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  • The title was changed to NASA's Newest Mars Mission is Launched
 

Lift off of InSight

 

InSight, MarCO Cubesats Separate from Atlas V Centaur Upper Stage

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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.

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1 billion dollars ?

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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.

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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.

 

 

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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.

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Excellent clarification from Waspie...

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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.

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  • 3 weeks later...

InSight Steers Toward Mars

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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.

arrow3.gif  Read More: NASA

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

NASA CubeSats Steer Toward Mars

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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.

arrow3.gif  Read More: NASA/JPL

 

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