NASA’s InSight Mission—which had been scheduled to lift off in March 2016 and study the interior of the Red Planet—has been delayed after US space agency officials determined that a leak in one of the rover’s primary instruments could not be fixed in time.
According to Ars Technica and The Independent, the affected instrument was set to measure the seismic activity on the planet, and needed to maintain a vacuum seal around its three sensors to function properly. Unfortunately, on three separate occasions this year, the 22 centimeter sphere that creates that vacuum sprung a leak—and each time efforts to fix the issue failed.
Last week, NASA officials confirmed the existence of a fourth leak, and it was determined that there just wasn’t enough time to fix the issue in time for the March launch window. The mission will now be delayed until at least May 2018 as NASA and the French outfit that built the device, the Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), review their data and determine the next step.
If they are unable to guarantee that the vacuum can be fixed to ensure that there will be no more leaks, that the repairs can be completed in time, and that the costs are not exorbitant, InSight may eventually be sent to Mars. There is a chance that the mission could wind up being permanently cancelled, however.
Team members confident that the necessary repairs can be made
In a statement, John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said that learning more about Mars’ interior has been “a high priority objective” for scientists at the agency “since the Viking era.” However, he added, “space exploration is unforgiving, and the bottom line is that we’re not ready to launch in the 2016 window.”
The relative positions of both Earth and Mars limit the most favorable conditions for launches to the Red Planet to just a few weeks every 26 months, according to the US space agency. InSight’s 2016 window lasted from just March 4 through March 30, and with repairs unable to be finished by then, Grunsfeld said a decision regarding the mission’s future would be “made in the coming months.”
“It’s the first time ever that such a sensitive instrument has been built,” said Marc Pircher, Director of CNES’s Toulouse Space Centre. Pircher seemed confident that the issue would ultimately be resolved, noting that his team and colleagues at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California were “close to succeeding.” While he vowed that they would “find a solution to fix it,” he added that such a solution would not come in time to launch by the end of March.
“The JPL and CNES teams and their partners have made a heroic effort to prepare the InSight instrument, but have run out of time given the celestial mechanics of a launch to Mars,” added JPL Director Charles Elachi. “It is more important to do it right than take an unacceptable risk.”
After all, as NASA Planetary Sciences director Jim Green noted, the Curiosity rover suffered a similar delay, and that turned out just fine in the end.
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Feature Image: NASA’s InSight lander. Credit: Lockheed Martin/NASA
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