InSight mission Options

[Paolo]

the GEMS Discovery finalist has been renamed InSight and now has its own website: http://insight.jpl.nasa.gov/

[Greg Hullender]

I was going to say I was amazed that we've reached the point where a Mars lander can be attempted on a Discovery budget. Then I found out that Pathfinder did it too: http://www.marsnews.com/missions/pathfinder/ That got me to wondering how much progress we've made in 20 years. I note that InSight should weigh about 350 kg--almost exactly the same as Pathfinder did.

A side-by-side comparison is a little tough, since InSight is about studying the interior of Mars while Pathfinder was focused on the surface. Also, the info on Insight is a little sketchy (from what I could find). A lot of it's derived from Phoenix, so that's a start I guess.

--Greg

[vjkane]

I was going to say I was amazed that we've reached the point where a Mars lander can be attempted on a Discovery budget.

Phoenix could fit into a Discovery budget only because the lander and instruments were mostly built. It turned out that the development team had to do a lot of testing and modification to the original design, but they had a solid starting place.

With the Phoenix lander a proven design, InSight can reuse it and hopefully fit within a Discovery budget.