Good morning from Los Angeles! Today at approximately 1954 GMT InSight will touch down in Elysium Planitia, and this is where we'll discuss all the events associated with that. https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/#public will provide live coverage starting at 1900 GMT. Official status updates will be published https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/timeline/landing/status/
Here's a list of significant events (source: JPL). Times listed first are Earth-received US Pacific Standard Time (GMT-8):
11:40 a.m. PST (2:40 p.m. EST) — Separation from the cruise stage that carried the mission to Mars
11:41 a.m. PST (2:41 p.m. EST) — Turn to orient the spacecraft properly for atmospheric entry
11:47 a.m. PST (2:47 p.m. EST) — Atmospheric entry at about 12,300 mph (19,800 kph), beginning the entry, descent and landing phase
11:49 a.m. PST (2:49 p.m. EST) — Peak heating of the protective heat shield reaches about 2,700°F (about 1,500°C)
-15 seconds later — Peak deceleration, with the intense heating causing possible temporary dropouts in radio signals
11:51 a.m. PST (2:51 p.m. EST) — Parachute deployment
-15 seconds later — Separation from the heat shield
-10 seconds later — Deployment of the lander's three legs
11:52 a.m. PST (2:52 p.m. EST) — Activation of the radar that will sense the distance to the ground
11:53 a.m. PST (2:53 p.m. EST) — First acquisition of the radar signal
-20 seconds later — Separation from the back shell and parachute
-0.5 second later — The retrorockets, or descent engines, begin firing
-2.5 seconds later — Start of the "gravity turn" to get the lander into the proper orientation for landing
-22 seconds later — InSight begins slowing to a constant velocity (from 17 mph to a constant 5 mph, or from 27 kph to 8 kph) for its soft landing
11:54 a.m. PST (2:54 p.m. EST) — Expected touchdown on the surface of Mars
12:01 p.m. PST (3:01 p.m. EST) — "Beep" from InSight's X-band radio directly back to Earth, indicating InSight is alive and functioning on the surface of Mars
No earlier than 12:04 p.m. PST (3:04 p.m. EST), but possibly the next day — First image from InSight on the surface of Mars
No earlier than 5:35 p.m. PST (8:35 p.m. EST) — Confirmation from InSight via NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter that InSight's solar arrays have deployed
Get the peanuts ready, and let's land on Mars!
GO INSIGHT!!!
Mars looking real big on "Eyes".
3 out of 4 of Madrid's DSN antennas are on InSight and the MARCOs right now.
I'm sure Spirit is thinking about it ;-)
Paolo
Good luck, everybody!
Gotta say, there is a surprisingly large amount of media attention being paid to this landing. In Los Angeles, local news has been periodically reminding everyone & even the network talk shows have mentioned it. The NASDAQ stock exchange apparently is promoting the coverage as well, which is quite unexpected.
I was also informed that all the Los Angeles public libraries are showing the landing live, and are handing out both library and InSight swag. Great EPO!!!
NASA TV live now!
Live feed started....
Hi! I'm new to this site. Thanks for letting me join.
Question: At what time will Insight land, in Mars local time?
NASA TV Media channel is showing the Insight mission control, but as far as I can see, there is no audio (yet?)
Just saw a shot of our chairman and founder djellison on console for MarCO!
EDIT: Nope, wasn't him.
Cruise stage sep in 2 min.
MarCO UHF lock.
Parachute deployment is at Mach 1.66. What is Mach speed on Mars with air pressure and temperature so different than Earth's?
Depends on the things you described, but in general lower because of the vastly lower air density.
MarCOs relaying data!
Atmospheric entry....
DEPLOY PEANUTS!!!!!!!
CHUTE DEPLOYED!!!
Radar has locked on to ground...
did we land
T O U C H D O W N !!!!!!!!
TOUCHDOWN!
touchdown!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm getting too old for this kind of stress! Great news and congrats to the team.
YEAH !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Standing by for X-band beep and maybe an image relayed by MarCO....
8 soft landings out of 9 attempts since 1976 --- what a record ! Congratulations to all.
SURFACE IMAGE!!!! Dust cover is dusty!!!
It looks like a few bugs splattered on the camera during descent
Lander is nominal.
will that lens cover come off?
Post landing briefing at 5pm EST.
Yes, of course. Not till it's safe to do so, though (gotta let the landing dust settle) and there are other critical events of higher priority, particularly solar panel deployment.
First image up already!
https://mars.nasa.gov/insight-raw-images/surface/sol/0000/icc/C000M0000_596533559EDR_F0000_0106M_.PNG
The surface looks very smooth.
Okay, this is a quick ten minute job to remove the worst of the dust. More dust than Mars, unfortunately.
Forum note: Later on today or possibly tomorrow after the early critical deployments are carried out this thread will be closed and we'll open a new surface operations thread.
What a ride that was!!!!
Heres the link for the first picture from Insight:
https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/multimedia/raw-images/?order=sol+desc%2Cdate_taken+desc&per_page=50&page=0&mission=insight
NASA TV live coverage just ended, press brief at 1400 PST (2200 GMT).
During the pre-landing briefings I did not hear anyone say an image might be sent back right after touchdown, did anyone else ?
"That was pretty quick, considering it's Sol 1"
No, actually it is Sol 0.
Phil
First image also here:
https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/22159/insights-first-image-from-mars/?site=insight
Phil
(The PNG file on the raw images site is not complete, the bottom of the image is missing.) Edit: it's fixed now
Complete image at least in Emily's article here (from twitter?) http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2018/insight-has-landed.html
Congrats Insight Team!
Working on the assumption that it's never too early to start analyzing images here on UMSF:
Just got out of a work meeting, did I miss anything?
Congrats to the team.
The landing site looks a very good place for HP3 instrument since the land is smooth, almost lack of stones and is sandy.
About the Lens of the camera, I thought that the next mission, this must be covered by a protective and after a landing, it should be opened before taking a picture. This is to prevent the lens of the camera from getting dirty
I did a quick and dirty cleanup of the initially tweeted image (not the better version that came out later) to capture the feeling of the scene.
Superb!
Reminder: Press conference on NASA TV in 12 minutes.
Congrats, team.
Press conference live now, featuring JPL (and UMSF's!) own Veronica McGregor!
MarCO image of Mars from 4000 miles! Also a brief glimpse of djellison!
Awesome...look forward to the protective len views.
John
Agreed. (We need to add a thumbs-up feature here... )
MarCO Mars flyby image. Definitely the selfie of the year. (Credit: NASA)
Forum note: Okay, not sure when the next update from NASA will be, but we'll keep the discussion here for now. Solar panel deployment confirmation expected no earlier than 1735 PST (0135 GMT), so hopefully we will receive word of that and possibly other data as well.
If landing site are match that image could be fine.
This is small version, I have also BIG 12000 x 8000 px
Possible meteorite? Pure speculation at this point. Congrats to the engineers!
A reminder how the Hazcam of Curiosity looks before the dusty dust cover comes off in 2012:
https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/proj/msl/redops/ods/surface/sol/00000/opgs/edr/fcam/FRA_397504830EDR_F0010000AUT_04096M_.JPG
and after it comes off:
https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/proj/msl/redops/ods/surface/sol/00000/opgs/edr/fcam/FRA_397506083EDR_F0010008AUT_04096M_.JPG
It seems that on Curiosity the dust slips also beyond the cover a little..but its just a guess what we might see in a few hours from the cover free Insight camera (in color!)
120 degrees de-fisheyed version, and an attempt to improve contrast of the environment behind the dust cover:
Can we compare Marco’s image definition to Mariner 4’s? Distance to Mars, FOV, etc...?
It seams to me that we can see some features...
The expected time for an orbiter downlink (looks like MODY) is approaching. Suggest following Emily's updated article http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2018/insight-has-landed.html?fbclid=IwAR0GtBPK9t29T8Tt0QrTJW7ZhJhqugW9wGR1i_7D6sKDQJWiEwe1Z4rzM2U; if anyone gets a scoop, it'll be her.
Yeah, but remember the same caution as the Oppy recovery efforts...it's not an authoritative indicator of anything, really.
I understand the caution about DSN Now in terms of the variable "positive predictive value" of it appearing to be communicating with a certain spacecraft. What is the "negative predictive value" of it showing a prolonged (i.e. in this case >25 min) NO communication through any antenna with a given spacecraft at a time that comm. was expected?
No idea. All I know is that the real word on anything's gotta come from NASA/JPL.
Yes but in this case the expected comm pass was with mars odyssey which would transmit from what it got from insight. Anyway nothing to do but wait and see
<shrug>...same thing in this case. MODY is shown on DSS 25 & 26, MAVEN & MRO also on 26. We can't tell.
Patience, grasshoppers, patience.
https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/11/26/insight-mission-status-center/
Spaceflightnow does live updates.
The raw image page:
https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/multimedia/raw-images/?order=sol+desc%2Cdate_taken+desc&per_page=50&page=0&mission=insight
shows two versions of the first image taken a few minutes apart. The dust has moved around a bit on it, which will help clean up the image while we wait for that cover to drop off.
Phil
Not exactly a flat parking lot, I see some good sized rocks.
A simple max filter does a good job of showing where the dust isn't between the two frames:
Well, the text accompanying that image says "looking forward to exploring my new home"
Thanks for the DSN Now clarification, Doug.
Yeah, that's...pretty rough in the distance. Could've gotten ugly. Looks like they found a nice sandy patch, though, if the rest of the terrain is like the near part.
Anyone notice the indentations on the robotic arm cover plate, wonder if they were there before flight ?
PHIL-O-VISION of the horizon; 10X vertical
~2 degrees tilt to the right - straighten out
This place is flat...
NASA JPL
Verified account @NASAJPL
2m2 minutes ago
Data from Odyssey indicate @NASAInSight’s solar arrays are open and batteries are charging. The transmission also included this view from the instrument deployment camera, showing the seismometer (left), grapple (center) and robotic arm (right) -----
Solar panels are deployed and batteries are charging.
https://twitter.com/NASAJPL/status/1067253443339776000
Edit: jinxed by Phil
Forum note: All RIGHT!!!!! We have now all exhaled, so it's time to segue into the surface operations phase. Please start migrating the discussion to http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=8432; the EDL thread will close sometime in the near future.
What a great day it's been.
Bruce Banerdt told me today the following:
- very close to center of the ellipse
- lander tilt about 1.7 degrees to N-eastish, basically level
- almost perfect clocking to desired E-W
Couldn't ask for anything more.
Question that they may or not may not know the answer to: The latest image shows some rough terrain fairly close at hand, though hard to judge distance; were they confident enough in the targeting accuracy that they were sure that they'd miss that area?
Was wondering precisely that. Glad to see that the luck of the Vikings was with InSight....
The larger rocks seem few and far between so there would be a finite but very low probability of landing on one. Would not smaller
rocks, potentially able to tilt the lander if a leg pad encountered one be moved by the lander exhaust? The landing image does seem to show a scoured field close in.
There is always a % risk of a bad landing.
I wonder what the worst case scenario was for instrument deploy ? 45 degrees/ 60 degrees ?
Just got back for a great dinner with family after EDL. This landing was great and the flight data almost looks like our sim data from the many EDL sims we did. Also a great match to Phoenix performance, so I hope we can do more of these than once every 10 years. Still very excited from my 2nd landing on Mars (now 2 for 3)! Was on InSight from the proposal phase, so 7 years of hard work came to fruition in in 7 minutes. Arrays deployed and we have positive power so short term we are very safe (never guess longer than short term).
The Marcos were great (if any Marco team members watch this forum thanks so much for the data)! We got Marco UHF carrier lock before we even separated from the cruise stage and telemetry well before entry interface. Never dropped data during EDL (even at backshell sep which expected). No ideas but I bet this technology will be on future lander programs. On PHX I focused on the prop system telemetry only (pressures and thruster on times). This time I watched the system performance (GNC rates, altitude and velocity), and I am glad that I did. I does look from the data we did a BAM to avoid the backshell (we had low horizontal rates), but need to review in more detail to be sure. Prop system worked great and thanks to all the suppliers who built the pieces for us. No way to compare the rush this event gave me (I have done lots of things in deep space including orbit insertions at Jupiter and Saturn) but nothing compares to seeing data like this during EDL! Much better than MPL (RIP, but without that failure we may not have had two successive successes). I am not involved in landed ops (no need for prop in that phase) but still hope all science goes great and just like PHX and Juno provides data that invalidates many previous theories (that is in my opinion the best reason to do these missions)! Getting tired so it is good night for me.
Great job, propguy; sure made it look easy to us amateurs!!! Get some rest & crack a cold one or six; you damn well earned it.
Thanks for all the InSight <rimshot!> you contributed here; it was fascinating and very, VERY much appreciated!
I just want to say congratulations to all the InSight team.
Yesterday Mars and InSight were trending since 18:00 UTC in social networks in Spain until late at night. And that is great.
A photo taken by the camera on the instrument arm has now appeared on the insight raw images page. The cover is still on this camera. However due to the lack of dust up there, the image is clear.
https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/13?site=insight
The rocks in this image look larger than those on the press conference image.
A rather neat public art reaction to the successful EDL. This is The Last Bookstore in downtown Los Angeles, at the intersection of 5th & Spring Streets. You will notice a small "space invader" tile model at about the 10 o'clock position from the large red lit balloon.
The invader appeared back in May. The balloon appeared several days ago but remained dark. The balloon was lit today.
Sorry to briefly reopen a closed thread, but NASA just released a rather cool bit of EPO regarding https://go.nasa.gov/MarsRocks. Check out the video, turn it up, and enjoy!
I will take advantage of the opened thread to add this: the cruise stage which brought InSight to Mars was separated before entry. It would have entered the atmosphere and some fragments probably hit the ground. The Curiosity cruise stage impact site was imaged by HiRISE, so InSight's probably could be as well. It would probably show up first in CTX images. Here's hoping!
Phil
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