Mission Control Live: NASA InSight Mars Landing

- After traveling through space for more than six months and crossing 300 million miles, InSight has reached its destination, the red planet Mars, welcome to Mission Control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, I'm Gay Yee Hill. In less than an hour, InSight will begin the most harrowing six and a half minutes of the entire

mission

, EDL, entry, descent and

landing

, the team is as prepared as possible, but who knows what Mars will have in store for us today. The cruise

mission

support area is full of engineers monitoring the situation and, for the first time during a

landing

on Mars, you can also be in the room;

We have a 360 degree camera in this

control

room, allowing you to experience the landing together with the team. There you see it, and to find the link, simply go to the InSight visualization page that you see on the screen. And this mission actually has two

control

rooms, the second is Lockheed Martin Space outside of Denver Colorado, the engineers are at console two. Plus, people around the world are tuning in at museums, libraries and other venues, including this one at the Pasadena Convention Center, and that's where friends and family are watching now; there will also be an opportunity to see it in New York City, there they are applauding, there will also be an opportunity to see it in New York City when coverage of the landing is shown on the NASDAQ Tower, as seen there in Times Square.

And of course, if you're watching, take a photo and share it with us using the hashtag Mars landing, we'd love to see it. Now I would like to introduce NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, thank you for coming. - Oh, it's an honor, thank you for inviting me. - We are very excited to have you here. - It's good to be here. - So this is your first landing on Mars? - It is in this work, I have witnessed this, I should say from the sidelines for many years, this will be the eighth time we have a successful landing on Mars, everyone knock on wood. - That's how it is. - But this is my first time participating as an administrator, so it's very exciting. - Excited, nervous? - Not nervous, excited. - Aren't you nervous? - Look at the amazing people here, there's no way I could be nervous. - Alright, we look forward to having you back on set after landing and maybe answer a couple of questions on social media. - Absolutely. - If you want to ask the administrator a question, use the hashtag AskNASA.

And before you left you asked about lucky peanuts, so this is your bottle to take there. - I'll be happily munching on these. - Very good, thank you for joining us. - Thank you. - Now let's give you some background, InSight is the abbreviation for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations and Heat Transport Geodesy, it is different from other missions to Mars that studied the surface, InSight is the first mission that studies the interior of the red planet. The basic idea of ​​InSight is to map the deep structure of Mars. We know a lot about the surface of Mars, we know a lot about its atmosphere, even its ionosphere, but we don't know a lot about what's going on. a mile below the surface, let alone 2,000 miles below the surface to the center, and this will be the first mission to go to Mars specifically to investigate the deep interior of Mars. - We know that the Earth is habitable, we know that Mars is not, there could be something that we discover in terms of the structure of Mars versus the structure of the Earth, that maybe can help us understand why that is. - InSight carries a seismometer that measures seismic waves that have traveled through Mars since the earthquakes, and maps the deep interior structure of Mars, we will also have a heat flow and physical properties probe, which will penetrate the surface of Mars approximately five meters or 16 feet to take the temperature on Mars.

And it has a radio science experiment that uses the spacecraft's radio to measure small variations in the wobble of Mars' poles to understand more about the structure and composition of the core. - InSight will be the first mission to pick up instruments from the lander's deck and place them on the surface of Mars. I like to say that we are playing the claw game on Mars without a joystick. The seismometer should be installed in one location and not moved to obtain the best seismic data. - We also have a heat and wind shield that we place on top of that seismometer to further protect it from the environment. - For the heat flux probe, HPQ, you also need to stay in one place, take time to stick into the ground and acquire the demonstration measurements over a long period of time. - InSight is a mission to Mars, but it is much, much more than a mission to Mars, in a sense it is like a time machine, it is measuring the structure of Mars that was established four and a half billion years ago, so that we can Go back and understand the processes that formed Mars shortly after its accretion from the solar nebula.

By studying Mars we can learn more about Earth, Venus, Mercury, even the Moon and even exoplanets around other stars. - Landing on Mars is always difficult, more than half of the missions have failed, our experts in this field, our systems engineers for entry, descent and landing, speak EDL. Let me introduce you to two people in our control room, Christine Szalai, who will be making mission calls during landing, and Julie Wertz Chen, our color commentator who will help explain mission operations. Christine, let's start with you. I understand there was an update and tweak to the funnel software, what does that mean? - That's right, yesterday we sent the latest EDL software parameter update to the spacecraft computer, this update told the spacecraft exactly when it will reach the top of the atmosphere and also adjusted things like when to deploy the parachute, this ADL software is very important, because InSight uses this software to perform entry, descent and landing completely on its own, Mars is so far from Earth that when an order is sent from Earth it takes about eight minutes to arrive to the spaceship, entry, descent. and the landing from start to finish takes less than eight minutes, so InSight has to do it on its own. - Very well, fate is sealed.

I now understand that the team is about to conduct a readiness survey. Julie, can you tell us about it? - Of course, it will be a survey between our communications engineer EDL and several of the different orbiters and antennas that we have here on Earth, so we will have MarCO listening to us, and MRO, which is Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, will be listening. to our data and recording it for us, and then the radio science engineers will be listening to our signal all the way back here on Earth, and Sandy, our EDL communications engineer, we'll be checking in with them, making sure everyone is ready to go, ready to help us land on Mars in just under an hour. - Very good, we are waiting for that, that preparation survey.

And I understand that the peanuts will be passed there very soon? - I think that's the idea, yes, we will be passing out the peanuts very soon after that, for those of you who don't know, JPL peanuts are a tradition, it gives us a little extra luck in our review. events, so if anyone wants to join the peanuts and give us an extra touch of good luck, we'd love to have you. - Well, there's a story behind that, when in the early days of JPL there were several missions, and there were six Ranger missions to the moon that failed, but then with Ranger seven... - Ranger seven someone... - Someone passed peanuts. - Yes, and it worked, and you don't play with what works, it's not a superstition, it's a tradition, and we simply give ourselves that little bit of extra luck. - So if you have peanuts at home, please eat some. - That's how it is. - Very good, thank you Julie.

NASA has made seven successful landings on Mars, but the EDL team is never overconfident; JPL chief engineer Rob Manning says things have to work correctly for a critical six and a half minutes. - Although we have done it before, landing on Mars is difficult and this mission is no different. The process to get from the top of Mars' atmosphere to this surface, we call it entry, descent and landing, or EDL, it takes thousands of steps to get from the top of the atmosphere to the surface, and each one of them has function perfectly for the mission to be successful.

The process starts high above the atmosphere of Mars, the cruise stage faces the sun, it also has its radio antenna facing the Earth, but now we don't need the cruise stage, its job is done. The next step, seven minutes before reaching the top of Mars' atmosphere, is to separate the cruise stage; However, before reaching the top of the atmosphere, the space capsule must be oriented so that the heat shield faces exactly into the atmosphere. Now the fun begins, the vehicle is moving at almost 13,000 miles per hour, but it is hitting the top of the atmosphere at a very shallow angle, 12 degrees, if it is steeper the vehicle will hit the thickest part of the atmosphere. and it will melt and if it burns, at a shallower depth, the rover will bounce off the atmosphere of Mars, at the top of the atmosphere is about 70 miles above the surface of Mars, and the air starts to get thicker and thicker, As it does so, the temperature exceeds 1,000 degrees Celsius, enough to melt steel, over the next two minutes, the vehicle decelerates to a grueling 12 Gs, from 13,000 miles per hour to approximately 1,000 miles per hour. per hour, about 10 miles above sea level. surface of Mars, a supersonic parachute is launched from the rear of the vehicle, 15 seconds after the parachute inflates, it is time to get rid of the heat shield, six pyrotechnic devices are fired simultaneously allowing the heat shield to fall and move away from the vehicle that exposes the lander to the surface of Mars.

Ten seconds after the heat shield falls, three pyrotechnically deployed legs release and lock for landing. About a minute later, the landing RADAR turns on and sends pulses toward the surface of Mars, as the rover begins trying to measure how high it is above the surface and how fast it's going. About a mile above the surface of Mars, the lander separates from the rear shell and fires its engines. And very quickly the vehicle must turn out of the way, so that the parachute and the rear shield do not come down to hit it, the last thing that has to happen is that at the moment of contact the engines have to turn off. immediately, if you do not do so the vehicle will overturn.

So once all the entry, descent and landing steps are done perfectly and we are safely on the surface of Mars, we will be ready to do exciting new science. - Person later in the program, in the meantime let me introduce you to someone who has been working at InSight for seven years, it's project director Tom Hoffman, seven years and today is the day. - That's right, seven years, but we've been there for just over 40 minutes and we'll be on the surface, it will be incredible. - Really exciting stuff. So let's talk about InSight, it is using tried and true technology, based on the Phoenix, this time there is a bigger challenge with communication, normally we have an orbiter that can give us bent pipe communications, but this time it is different. - That's right, most of the time, when we landed recently, we had Mars Odyssey, which can do communications with bent pipes, so we get real-time data as we go through EDL, and we expected that. and we actually really want that.

In this case, our main technology, the main orbiter is Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and what it is going to do is listen to us in UHF, if you go to the video you can see this, MRO will be listening to us and will receive all the primary data and will send it to us return, unfortunately only three hours after landing. - So you don't give us

live

information about the bent pipe as it happens? - Not so, we have a couple more sources that we are looking at, we have the Green Bay Observatory in West Virginia, the Max Planck Observatory in Effelsberg, Germany, that will give us UHF, but those only give us at a couple of different times, so this time we did something cool: we brought a couple of Cubesats called MarCO, so we hope they are both working very well today. - Ah, fantastic. - So we hope that you will continue to work throughout the EDL process and give us information in real time, so that we can show how it works in the next video here.

So you can see here the InSight with its cruise stage approaching Mars, but we have two stalkers following us, they've been following us since we launched, they launched on the same launch vehicle as us, so you can see the green there. If we send them UHF signals, and then they turn it around and send a much stronger signal back to Earth, we cannot communicate in UHF directly to Earth with this signal, which tells us what is happening on the shipspace. but MarCO can, if it works for us to the surface, we will get excellent information coming from MarCO. - So MarCO is basically trying to fill that gap that we would have had if we had

live

communication to us. - Absolutely. - So if it doesn't work, does it affect InSight's mission at all? - Not at all, we'll just bite our nails a little more, but right now it looks like it's going to work, but it doesn't affect InSight at all, and we have one last way to find out. that we have successfully reached Earth, that it is the spacecraft that will call home, once it reaches Earth, it has spent seven months on cruise, seven and a half minutes of terror, and it will call back and say: "A At first glance I feel pretty good, everything seems fine so far. - And also to prepare the audience, even after landing we are still not out of the woods, right? - Not yet, we have one more step we have to take. , we have to literally let the dust settle, we are going to kick up a lot of dust when we land, we have to let the dust settle, before we deploy our solar panels, we are 100% solar powered, so it is very important that the let's take it out, unfortunately, both MRO and MarCO will be out of sight when we have them fully deployed, so we will have to wait five and a half hours until Odyssey comes and tells us that yes, our solar panels are off.

There will be a celebration when we make a successful landing, but we'll have to tone that down a bit and wait about five and a half hours to be absolutely sure we're in good shape. - So we have immediate knowledge if we have MarCO, so to go over it once again, what is going to happen with EDL, we have the video of the program, how exactly all this will play out in six and a half minutes. You can shoot the video. - Well, you can see here that we are attached to the cruise stage, we leave it, we give thanks for the trip to Mars, it burns up in the atmosphere, you can see that it gets very hot in our heat shield, we.

In some places we get up to maybe 3000 degrees Fahrenheit as we go through this, we're in the heat shield for about four minutes, which dissipates about 90 percent of the energy we need to dissipate before we get to the surface, then we open our parachute, we're going about 850 miles per hour when we open the parachute, we're at it for about two minutes, then we'll release the heat shield, we'll start detecting the terrain with our RADAR, Very much like a RADAR on an F-fighter jet. 16, the legs will open, we will start to descend, we will fall for just a second, which is very scary for me.

Our descent thrusters, we have 12 of them, they are 16 pound thrusters. , we start pushing ourselves and letting ourselves fall to the ground, and little by little we are falling, going only five miles an hour, so when those six and a half minutes of terror, which is a little less than seven minutes, that's great for me, We went from 12,300 miles per hour to 75 miles above the surface of Mars, we hit the surface and we're doing five and a half miles per hour. - That's amazing, that's absolutely amazing, well before you go Tom, there were a couple of photos we wanted to show you, we have viewing parties all over the country, and let's see if we can organize one of these viewing parties.

So you can see, this is from Ohio, it's a person who has a viewing party, it seems like it's in a classroom. - That's so amazing. - Isn't it great that people are watching with us? - Yes, I know, people from all over the world are watching this and we really want to give them a good show today. - Okay, I'll let you go back to the room. - I have to go back there. - I know you're excited. Very well, take care of yourself, thank you for joining us. - Thank you. - Okay, let's introduce you to the people who built InSight, Lockheed Martin Space outside of Denver, these are the people who built Viking in 1976 and Mars Phoenix in 2008, the operations team is there and the manager of Lockheed InSight EDL , Tim Linn, is standing.

So, Tim, what's going on in there? - The team is very excited, we are almost ready, we are about half an hour from the entry and the start of the entry, the descent and the landing, so the team is very excited and focused, but also very excited about the next . Successful entry, descent and landing we are approaching. - We talked about the fact that InSight is based on tried and true technology, it's based in Phoenix, but you had to make a couple of changes for InSight, what were they? - Yes, obviously, as you said, we took advantage of a lot of Phoenix, there were many wonderful things that we were able to take advantage of from the Phoenix mission, but InSight is a unique mission, it lands towards the equator of Mars and several things are different, where we landed, we are about a a mile higher in altitude, plus what that required us to do is get a little bit shallower, plus we're a little bit heavier than Phoenix, so we had to increase some of the strength of the lander itself, so we had to increase the strength of the parachute, we have to deploy the parachute a little higher because of some of the differences. on our entry timeline, and because we're landing, we're landing towards the end of the dust season, so we've also increased the thickness of the heat shield, so our heat is about a quarter of an inch thicker . shield to accommodate that potential sandblast that we might see when we actually make our entry, descent and landing.

So we've changed a number of things, but obviously we also leveraged a lot from the successful Phoenix mission. - That's great, so you can customize it, because before there was some concern that there was a dust storm going on, it was dust storm season. - That's right, we've actually had great support from our on-orbit assets, MRO and Odyssey, a couple of spacecraft that we've partnered with JPL that were built here at Lockheed Martin, they've actually provided us with a lot of great information about the weather on Mars, the dust storms that are potentially happening on Mars, and as of today, and in fact the last few weeks it has been fantastic on the surface of Mars, we are anticipating very nominal and very seasonal weather on In terms of density, atmosphere and temperature, the dust storms appear to be very benign, so we are very optimistic that it will be a great day to land on the surface of Mars. - Okay, that's good news, thanks Tim, and I know your team is as excited as we are.

Take care. - Absolutely, thank you very much. - It is now 11:21, it is about 20 minutes, tension is increasing in both control rooms, there are about 20 minutes left until the separation of the cruise stage, it is not far away, the separation of the cruise stage is expected cruise is approximately 40 minutes past time. , so we are indeed getting closer. So where will InSight go to Mars? It is a place called Elysium Planitia, Planitia in Latin means flat, Elysium in ancient Greek means paradise after death, it is located near the equator, north of Gale Crater, not far from the Curiosity Rover, the team calls it the most parking lot. big from Mars.

It is a safe place, it has a lot of sunlight that will power the solar instruments to study the interior of Mars. - What's inside Mars? We know a lot about what's inside Earth, but on Mars we've barely scratched the surface; To know how Mars was formed we have to study its deep interior. NASA's InSight lander was designed to do just that, taking vital elements from the planet. signals, listening to your pulse for seismic activity, including any Mars earthquakes, taking your temperature to see how much heat flows from deep within, and checking your reflections to see how much the planet wobbles as it orbits the sun.

All of this provides clues about what the planet is really like on the inside. So what's inside Mars? InSight can help us find out by giving Mars its first comprehensive examination since it formed four and a half billion years ago. The more we learn, the better we understand all the rocky planets and the history of our solar system. - We are joined now by Bruce Banerdt, the principal investigator of Mars InSight. InSight is a mission to Mars, but we keep hearing over and over again that it is more than a mission to Mars. - That's right, Gay, I mean we're going to Mars to study the Martian interior and map the divisions within Mars, but we want to use that information to understand more about the solar system as a whole and how rocky planets form. . - And rocky planets, we have a picture to show people, so we're talking about the Earth, the Moon, Mars. - Mercury, Venus, the planets of the inner solar system that are made primarily of rocks, and all share the same basic structure with a dense iron core, a rocky mantle and then a crust of lighter silicate rocks, but the details Those layers' thicknesses, sizes and compositions give us many clues about how those planets formed and why they took very different paths to the different planets we see today. - So explain to me, we are going to have a lander, you will be on the surface, how will you be able to study the interior? - We use what are called geophysical instruments, they use the principles of physics to see through rocks, we use seismic waves, the same way you could use a flash to take pictures of something, we are using earthquakes from Mars, which They send vibrational waves through the planet, and as they pass through the planet they reflect out of bounds, they bend, they change their speed and that changes the movements that are seen on a seismograph, when we pass through the planet, you can see that here.

It hits the different boundaries and those waves reflect, sometimes they bend, it becomes a pretty complicated pattern, but scientifically we have learned over the last hundred years how to interpret the code of the signals that come back to the surface. , in seismometers that capture that signal and then convert it into data that we can use on Earth, to understand what the 3D structure of the planet is. - So normally you use three seismometers, in this case you are bringing size, that is one, how are you going to be able to obtain that information using one? - Well, we had to be a little clever, because throughout the Earth there are normally many seismometers, you can use several seismometers to triangulate where the earthquake is, on Mars we are going to do something a little different, We will not only use the P and S waves of that you may have heard of, but we will also use surface waves, and here you can see the surface waves moving from a Mars earthquake, and as it passes over the InSight lander, you can see the seismograph up there on the top left corner where you have the movements, now those waves continue to go around the planet, and since Mars is not that big, they still have a good amount of amplitude, they haven't arrived. completely damped, by the time it has gone all the way around the planet, it passes over the spaceship again, and finally even the way they went around the planet in the opposite direction crosses over and hits us a third time, so we have more information about the P and S waves, we have these wave arrivals at the surface that we can use to determine the distance from the Marsquake to our lander, and then we use something called polarization analysis, to determine which direction the waves are coming from, and By doing that, we can do the same thing that we can do with three stations on Earth, just using the P and S waves. - And very quickly, there is still another instrument built by DLR that is also being used by InSight, can you speak a little about that? - Yes, that's our heat flow probe, and it's a cool instrument that uses a mechanical mole, as we call it, to dig its way to the surface, it has a motor that winds a hammer and it knocks itself down just a few millimeters at a time. the time. at a time, but we give it 20 or 30,000 hammer blows and it brings it down, we hope to get down to about 16 feet below the surface, and once we get there, we're actually measuring the heat coming off the planet, measuring the temperature along the cable as it rises to the surface, and observing how that temperature increases as we descend, and extrapolating that to the depths of the planet to understand how much energy is within the planet to drive the geology. and to promote volcanism, earthquakes, all types of activity. - It's amazing how much you can learn from the surface about the inside. - I think it's incredible, it's something I've been working on my entire professional career and I find it fascinating. - Okay, we'll talk about that, thanks Bruce.

Bruce first thought about the mission this way, as he mentions 40 years ago when he was a grad student, the rest of the team hasn't waited that long, but this is a big moment for them too, we recently sat down with a few of the members and asked them what it will be like as we get closer to landing. - It is something very difficult to do and everything has to be perfect, as humans we have sent 17 different missions to thesurface of Mars and 10 of them have crashed. Before we can land on Mars, we have to get to Mars.

How do we get to Mars? - The main responsibility of the navigation team is to ensure that the spacecraft reaches the correct point in the Martian atmosphere. The target location is about 12 kilometers in size, our accuracy is comparable to shooting a basketball from the Staple Center in downtown Los Angeles and hitting nothing but the net on a basketball hoop in New York City , which moves at a speed of approximately two feet per hour. second and rotates on its axis. - The landing site has an ellipse that is quite large, it is approximately 60 miles long. We could land anywhere on that ellipse, there's a chance we'll land right on a rock, and we have no control over that.

So that's what makes me nervous. - We test the RADAR by flying it in a helicopter, we test pieces of the heat shield by placing them in an arc jet setup, we test the parachute by testing it in a wind tunnel and putting it all together in a very controlled sequence where everything has to go right, we have never done that proven, and the first time it will happen will be once you take us to Mars. - It's around 11:29 a.m. Pacific Time and you're watching live coverage of the InSight landing from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

We are about half an hour from landing, and people from all over the world are watching, take a look at the map we have for you, we can show it to you right now, this is an in-person viewing map where people have viewing parties. All over the world, all over the United States, in Paris, in Berlin, even off the coast of Madagascar, and people in the Big Apple will also be watching today, the NASDAQ Tower will change. If we move to coverage of the landing for about a time, that means people in Times Square will be able to see it too, and later today, NASA will have the honor of ringing the closing bell, and that will be in just over an hour.

And if you're looking, take a photo and send it to us, using the hashtag Marslanding, here's one that I think is from the California Science Center in Los Angeles, and I'm told Eric Garcetti will be visiting us later today. Things are getting more active for the team now. Let's talk to Julie Wertz Chen again in the control room, what's going on Julie? - Yes, we have heard from MRO a couple of times, that is Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, they are doing everything they can, they are ready to support us, they are doing very well, and we heard from both MarCO, MarCO A and B, that they're out there, they have telemetry lock from the ground stations here, so they are doing very well and everyone is ready to go, so we are very excited. - Great, we'll talk to Julie again in a moment, in the meantime this is a good time to tell you a little more about that technological experiment we've been talking about, MarCO, as we mentioned earlier, InSight does not have an orbiter in position to send data EDL live, so the Cubesats hope to fill that gap, here's how they will work. - Communication between Mars and Earth requires complicated choreography, with everything in the right place at the right time.

Sometimes it can take hours before information is linked from one planet to another, which is why when NASA's Mars InSight Lander launches this year, the rocket will carry two small satellites for a technological test of its own. Meet Mars Cube One, MarCO, NASA's first Cubesat mission to deep space, these briefcase-sized satellites will travel separately from the InSight Lander while testing new miniaturized technologies, and if they reach Mars they could link information with Earth about Descent and InSight landing, and do it in a matter of minutes. Although this rapid communication is not crucial to the success of the InSight Lander, this Cubesat test could change the way future spacecraft communicate with their homes. - Okay, let's check back with Julie to see if the MarCOs are really ready to support and listen to InSight, Julie, what do you know? - So they are ready to go, I haven't heard about their turn yet, but they are ready to go, we have heard from them, they are both healthy and they are both doing very well, which is just wonderful. news.

So I think they should be making a move; In fact, I think they should be making a move in just a minute. - Then we will sit still and listen. - All stations and systems, we can confirm that we are entering - 20 minutes, EDL two navigation started, star tracker turned off. - Navigation software two has been started, so when we are cruising we use a star tracker, similar to how sailors navigated years ago, we look at the stars and get our relative position from them, we use a star . tracker for that, and now that we're close enough to Mars, we don't need it anymore, so we'll transition to what's called Nav two software, and we'll basically use velocity and acceleration from this point on, so now we don't need the star tracker. - Clear MarCO, coast or tear off a bent tube. - Turn to the proper altitude for the bent pipe;

The bent pipe mode will be entered shortly. - Okay thank you very much. - And that was obviously confirmation of the large amount of MarCO, so it's great news. - Fantastic. - So, as I was saying before, the Nav two software is going to propagate from here on out and we're going to use speed and acceleration, so we turn off our star tracker, we're in our Nav two software and everything is looking. excellent. - Okay, thank you Julie. Alright, cruise stage separation is just four minutes away, and Rob Manning joins us now, Rob is the chief engineer here at JPL and an absolute veteran of Mars landings.

We're going to play a little video right now, you haven't seen it yet, but we'll stream it. Let's go ahead. This is... - Live lander acceleration, 14 carrier jam reports on... - There you are, you were the phase leader. You were sitting since . - Yes, that's how I look when it's successful. - Yes. - I would hate to see what it would have been like if I hadn't been successful. - But speaking of that, what is the EDL like, why is it so difficult? - Well, it's many years of work by many people struggling to put all the pieces together, and particularly because we can't really test entry, descent and landing on this planet, it's much more complicated, Mars has a lower atmosphere, thinner. atmosphere, less gravity, you just can't place the pieces, so imagine you have a big Broadway production, but you can't actually do the show until the whole audience shows up, so that's what it feels like, so you never really know if you've really done it right. - Well, we've done it seven times, can we say a piece of cake, do we know what we're doing? - No, I don't think so, we are getting better at that, and there is no doubt that we have learned, we have learned both from the successes and from our own failures, including the failures of other missions outside of this country, so those pieces come together . in our mind's eye, and we try to put together what we learned, and just do the best we can, and if we don't succeed, we will learn, because we are collecting data on the way down, if something bad happens today, we will be able to Taking what we learned, even though we may fall to the ground after being kicked off the horse, we will get up, brush ourselves off, figure out what we did wrong, and get back on the horse. . - Well, there is a lot of uncertainty, just give some possible scenarios of what could happen today during the EDL, especially during communications. - Well, the good news is having communications, almost anything could go wrong, there's a good chance we can figure it out, but things like the parachute have to go right, you don't open parachutes on Earth at Mach one and a half. , one and a half times the speed of sound, you simply don't do that, it's not necessary on this planet, but we have to do it because if we waited any longer we would be on Earth.

A very complicated RADAR system has to work from outer space to the ground and search for the ground, what if it gets blocked in the heat shield? Well, we have tried to avoid that problem, we solved that problem that we believe prevents that from happening, but what happens if we are wrong? Things like that can happen and bad things could happen to our vehicle, but we have worked hard to avoid them. - So we're getting closer, we'll go to the control room to separate the cruise stage, Rob. - Well. I need to take off. Yes Yes. - InSight Systems, EDL COMM. - Forward? - At this point MRO will have loaded his electronic sequences, and MarCO expects the carrier to crash at any moment, MarCO B has recorded that they are in a bent tube, still waiting for A. - Copy that, thanks. - Radio Science report, UHF carrier detected. - EDL COMM, MarCO Alpha is a bent pipe mode, MarCO bravo has been locked to the carrier.

MarCO Alpha has also set its sights on the operator. - InSight Court based systems, as expected the DSN has in-band x-band LS. - Copy that, thank you. All InSight station systems at the InSight core, DSN, have lost the InSight X-band signal, indicated by the expected separation of the cruise stage. Awaiting acquisition of UHF signals through MarCO radio science. We are about five minutes from the entrance and we have confirmation that we have lost the InSight X-band signal, this was expected because we have moved from the antenna on the cruise stage to the UHF antenna on board the spacecraft.

Ground stations have detected a UHF signal and MarCO has locked onto the signal, confirming that InSight is transmitting UHF signals as expected. InSight telemetry through the MarCO relay is not expected until about two minutes before entry. - So, Rob, that was exactly what we expected here, that the MarCOs are... - The vehicle also performed the turn maneuver to enter, the vehicle is moving away from the sun pointing at altitude and oriented to enter the Martian atmosphere. - This is a great first step, just separating the cruise stage. After the vehicle turns to the correct orientation, the cruise stage will now move further and further away until it is about three or four football fields away and burn out. in parallel when the vehicle enters Mars. - And Christine mentioned turn-in, what does that mean? - Well, it's because the cruise stage has to be pushed to the side like this, the rest of the vehicle has to turn to face the atmosphere and be completely crazy when it reaches the top of the atmosphere. - So this is absorbing all the heat that reaches the atmosphere? - Exactly, it will provide a source of resistance, but also thermal protection, because it's over 1500 degrees Celsius in this heat shield, very, very hot, but inside the heat shield, it's maybe only a few degrees. above ambient temperature, making it a wonderful protective device to keep our lander safe. - Very well, the next thing we are waiting for is... - The entrance. - Entrance. - Reaching the top of the atmosphere and gradually slowing down.

Right now the vehicle is just starting, very soon it will start to feel the atmosphere touching it, actually the entrance is slightly above the atmosphere, so it's not really until half a minute. or so after entry before we really start to pick up on the fact that that atmosphere is slowing us down. - Very well, we will be waiting. - Yes, exciting. - Rob, now check-in is scheduled for 11:47, the cruise stage is set and the check-in times are set to correct? - They are, they are set when we select the target and point the vehicle very precisely, which allows us to know exactly when we reach the entry point, which is between 35 and 55 kilometers from the center of Mars. - We know those times are set, but what about all the other events that take place? - Radio Science reports that carrier power is decreasing as expected. - MarCO A and MarCO B have telemetry. - I just heard, both MarCOs have telemetry. - They are doing their job, these little Cubesats are transmitting ones and zeros with a few seconds delay from the vehicle to these two vehicles, and forwarding them back to Earth to the deep space network using X, - Y band antennas In mind, this was all an experiment, we weren't sure this was going to work, but we had a need to not have live communication on this particular mission. - Well, we don't really need communications, we don't need your information, except if something went wrong, we would very much like to get the data right now, we have other spaceships. - We are now receiving InSight telemetry through MarCO. - Ah, it's flowing, fabulous.

That means the team can now see the data flowing onto their screens as if they were communicating directly with the vehicle. - This data will provide detailed information about the state of the shipspatial throughout EDL. - We were on pins and needles waiting for that, because we weren't really sure. - This is wonderful news, if this continues to work to Earth and beyond, we could even see a first image from the surface of Mars. - Wouldn't that be great? - Coming soon. - Atmospheric entry to my mark, three, two, one, mark. - Here we go. - So, in a few seconds the vehicle will begin to detect the atmosphere, 22 kilometers from the center of Mars, and will begin to slow down very, very slowly at first, but then faster and faster, until it reaches about seven G.

I made that mistake in the video, it's actually seven G, not 12, but it will still slow down very, very quickly, from 15-- - In about a minute, InSight is expected to reach its maximum warm-up speed, a blackout of plasma. during peak heating, and could cause a temporary drop in telemetry, this could last up to two minutes. - The gas that comes out of the heat shield as it slows down, looks like a meteor if you are on Mars watching the streak go by, that glow of the gas interferes with radio reception, so MarCO may miss it. signal as it passes through this very hot entrance. - But do not be alarmed. - No need to be alarmed, it's part of the design, we fully expect it. - Radio science reports plasma blackouts as expected. - Okay, go. - Ground stations have reported a plasma blackout and are still receiving InSight telemetry via MarCO. - MarCO Alpha has carrier interruption. - InSight should now be experiencing maximum heating rate;

Parts of the heat shield can reach nearly 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit as it protects the lander from the heating environment. - That's hot. - MarCO Bravo has carrier interruption, but is still locked. - InSight has passed through peak deceleration, telemetry shows the spacecraft at about 8 Gs. - MarCO Alpha and MarCO Bravo maintain the block. - Carrier of scientific radio reports was detected. - Several different communications arrive. - InSight now travels at a speed of 2000 meters per second. - It seems to have passed this very critical point of maximum heating and maximum deceleration. The next big step is parachute inflation. - You can see that on our timeline at the bottom of the screen, the next event is the parachute deployment. - InSight now travels at 1000 meters per second.

Once InSight decelerates to about 400 meters per second, it will deploy its 12-meter-diameter supersonic parachute, the parachute nominally deploying at about Mach 1.7. Waiting for the parachute deployment. - Radio science reports a sudden change in Doppler. - Ground stations are observing signals consistent with parachute deployment. - MarCO Alpha and MarCO Bravo maintain the locked state. - Telemetry shows parachute deployment, RADAR on. The heat shield was ordered to be separated. - So far this is very good news. - It's fantastic. - I'm on tenterhooks. - We have RADAR activation where the RADAR starts searching the ground, once the RADAR locks onto the ground and InSight is about a kilometer above the surface, the lander detaches it from the rear shell and begins terminal descent using its 12 descent engines.

Altitude convergence, RADAR has fixed on the ground. Waiting for lander separation. - Operator interruption in MarCO Alpha and MarCO Bravo. - The lander was ordered to separate, altitude 600 meters. Spin by gravity, altitude 400 meters. - We're getting there. - 300 meters. 200 meters. 80 meters. 60 meters. 50 meters, constant speed, 37 meters, 30 meters, 20 meters, 17 meters, waiting to land. Confirmed landing. - That is fantastic. - This never goes out of style. - No, it's not like that Rob, the control room just exploded. - Fabulous, fabulous. - Command of the MarCO team there. - The MarCO team did very well, Ted Reising, one of Lockheed's key designers.

Sandy Krasner, you are a great team. This is really fabulous. - Fantastic news. - Thank you. -There are a lot of punches in there. What a relief, we've cut to the camera in Times Square, people are braving the rain to see this. - They can't help it. This is the hardest part, getting to the surface and landing, although this has a lot more to do, there is a lot more to do today and in the coming days before the science can begin, but just getting a vehicle from Earth. Getting to the surface of Mars is no easy task. - And Rob, could you talk about that, just the sheer achievement that we're seeing? - You have to understand, this vehicle is very complicated, it uses 12 motors, each of those motors pulses 10 times per second, producing these little pulses, almost like little bullets that keep the vehicle at a constant speed as it approaches. the ground, and it's still going over five miles per hour, so those legs feel pretty crushed, we still don't know the state of the vehicle at this point, we have to look to make sure there are no rocks nearby, the panels Solar panels in about five to ten minutes will begin to open, they are waiting for the dust to settle, because surely at this moment there is a lot of dust rising into the air around the vehicle, which is now just settling. - So we are waiting, after landing it waits a couple of minutes to give us an X-band beep, so we are waiting for that, it is a communication that comes directly to Earth from InSight. - Yes, and it goes to the Deep Space Network, there is also something that could be happening now, if we are very lucky, InSight could transmit an image or a partial image taken just a couple of minutes after landing, so I'm waiting to see that, but if that doesn't happen, we'll certainly get more footage later in our Odyssey pass in about five hours. - We see Bruce Banerdt waiting for him, I don't know if you see him yet. - They're waiting, that's Justin Mackie and Bruce Banerdt looking closely at the cameras to see what they might see.

They are waiting for the image to come back. - This is the first image from InSight, InSight is taking a photograph with one of its two cameras, it is probably a view of what is directly in front of the spacecraft, right in front of the lander, this is a camera that We'll use it to find out if this is a good space, if it's a good place to put our instruments, so it will take an image and then send it to the MarCOs, the MarCOs will in turn transmit it back to Earth. . - That's great, they got it.

This is great, let's see what they have. There is. - There is the picture. - That's a good place, it's not far from where they will be able to deploy the instruments, so it's cool, I don't see many... - Let's explain that image, now this image has a dust cover on the top. of it. - EDL COMM, we have lost the MarCO signal. - You can potentially see many... - Radio signals report loss for UHF. - So we don't know what I'm looking at. - Thanks to everyone at EDL COMM. - MarCO trust work. - Yes, Marco.

Congratulations. But there it is, you can see a better view, you can see that it's really debris, there's the horizon, the blueish sky, that's part of the lander platform on the left front, I can't make it out, but it looks like there's no Lots of rocks in the field of view, but those dots you see are most likely dust particles on the dust cover, which will be removed. - And you will have another chance later. - Yes. And a better and clearer view after removing the dust cover, the Cubesats relay communications work is finished, now they are flying, now they are taking pictures back to Mars, hopefully the MRO that flew over could have lucky enough to capture the descent. of this InSight Lander under its parachute, while this was happening, MRO was flying overhead recording the data, and also monitoring the transactions, and recording every bit of signal it could, but also had the ability to take a photograph, perhaps like we did with Phoenix and then Curiosity Rover, we may be able to see the inflated parachute. - That would be fantastic, now we're waiting for that X-band beep, InSight calling home saying I'm here and I'm fine. - Systems in InSight core, DSM and X-band. - Radio science reports an X-band carrier detected. - Four and a half minutes with InSight in nominal mode. - Copy that, thank you. - Flawless, - Perfect, - Flawless, - We got the beep, this was a perfect case in my book. - This is what we really hoped and imagined in our minds, we spent a lot of time visualizing that all these bad things can happen, but sometimes things work out in your favor.

And we'll look very carefully at the data and see how well it went, but it certainly looked like it was a very successful and perfect landing, we'll have to see as we get more data how well things go, like the vehicle. proceeds that the solar panels will deploy, hopefully they won't be tilted, it doesn't look like that in the picture, but we expect the solar panels to deploy safely, and we'll get confirmation of that around five in the afternoon. local time here in about four and a half to five hours from now. - And this is such a difficult feat, since due to the one-way lag time, there is no way for any of these engineers to control the vehicle, everything has to be done through commands and software. - Yes, we have to train him to do this job on his own. - Radio science reports nominal carrier 30 seconds after first acquisition, so we are nominal on the surface. - So the vehicle is completely nominal, reported nominal, it's happy, the lander isn't complaining, we had a way to tell us if it was unhappy, and it wasn't, it's not unhappy, it's in normal mode, and it is.

I will spend the rest of the afternoon on Mars and finish the activities. - Alright Rob, I know you're eager to come in and congratulate the team, thank you so much for sitting here and helping us. - It was a pleasure. - And explaining EDL. - Thank you. - Okay, well I'll let you go and I'll congratulate your friend. - Thank you. - Okay. Be careful. - EDL COMM on InSight operations recording completed at 20:04:34. - Okay, as promised, we said we would bring the administrator back to give us his opinion on what it was like to be in that control room, Jim, how was it? - Well, I'll tell you, it was intense and you could feel the emotion, it was very, very calm when the time came to be silent, and of course very festive with every little new information that was received, it's very different being here than watching it on television, I can tell you that now that I've experienced both, and then of course the amazing thing is that as soon as it was over, I got a call on my cell phone. , and the phone number with all zeros, and every time I get a phone call that's all zeros it has to be someone important, I answered, and it was the vice president, he saw the whole thing, he's absolutely ecstatic about our show. , as you know, is the president of the National Space Council and, of course, he has been an enthusiastic supporter of what we do, and for him to call within seconds of the success of the mission is tremendous, and just so everyone knows, he wants I want to congratulate everyone here at NASA, all of our international partners and everyone who has contributed to this mission.

What a wonderful day for NASA. - It's an amazing achievement, since this is something that is happening millions and millions and millions of miles away, and these people are capable of doing it. - Incredible, and the fascinating thing is that, as I watch it, I think that each milestone is something that happened eight minutes ago, because that is the delay to receive a signal from Mars to Earth, so it is exciting, but then you have to give take a step back and realize that this has already happened in history, so it is a unique, incredible experience, just the enthusiasm here is incredible. -So, what does the future hold for us, looking ahead to 2020? - Well, let's get through December, so for the rest, we think about what will happen next December 3, we will take another American astronaut to the International Space Station, so it will be a great achievement, and it will be on a Russian Soyuz. rocket, the last time we launched a human it was unsuccessful. - That was horrible. - It was scary, but we found out what the problem is, we are moving forward and now we launch it on December 3rd.

From there, we'll get the first science data from the Parker Solar Probe on December 7, so it's not too far away either, and then we'll have Osiris Rex, which will be in orbit around Benu shortly after. Christmas, so there is no shortage of interesting things. And then on January 1, we will fly the New Horizons mission, which for people who don't know, that's the mission that went to Pluto in 2014, will give us amazing images, data and science about Pluto, and now that The mission is still going strong, it's in what we now call the Kuiper Belt, which is an asteroid belt far beyond Pluto, and it will take images of Ultima Thule, which is an object in the Khyber belt that we've never been able to get out and takes pictures of anything at close range before, and now we're doing it, so you ask what's going to happen next. - ItI'm sorry, I asked. - We have now at NASA, there is more going on, probably than I don't know how many years have passed, but it's like there's a drought, and suddenly there are all these activities at once, so we're busy, let's work during the holidays, but there are still many amazing discoveries to be made and we are looking forward to it. - It's very funny, because our NASA question that you basically answered is: does the success of NASA InSight influence the schedule of future manned missions to the Moon or Mars? - Well, certainly everything we learn about Mars right now will help us understand how to use resources in situ, so InSight could provide really good information about whether or not there is liquid water on Mars, and maybe even where it is. and how to get to it, we firmly believe that there is liquid water 10 kilometers below the surface of Mars, so the key is, the answer is yes, the more we learn, the more we can achieve, so to get to Mars Yes.

But the lunar missions, the president's first space policy directive, is to go to the Moon, go sustainably with international and commercial partners, so when we say sustainable, that means we're going to have reuse built into the system, and we're going to test and test technologies on the moon, which we will ultimately be able to replicate on Mars, so we will retreat at our risk, we will test human physiology on the moon, which is only a three-day trip, which means that if something goes wrong, We can get home safely, we saw that with Apollo 13, but we need to use the moon as a testing ground to accelerate our path to Mars, in the meantime we are doing missions like InSight to learn as much as possible about Mars.

InSight will also help us understand asteroid impacts, because it has a seismometer, which will help us know how often Mars is impacted by asteroids, and if we are going to send humans there, it would be important to know if those humans are going to experience asteroid impacts. . - And that is practically our goal: always learn from our missions and develop them. - One after another, and NASA has a long history of doing amazing work based on its past successes and, indeed, its past failures. - That's true. - I'll tell you what a wonderful time to be at the helm of this extraordinary agency. - Well, we are very glad that you are here to share it with us, thank you for joining us. - Well Gay, it has been a real pleasure. - And I'm sure you need to go in and celebrate with those people, but thank you for supporting us. - Absolutely, thank you very much. - Okay.

Be careful. Now, Mars exploration is an interesting thing, but if you're still not convinced, talk to the scientists and engineers at InSight, no one exudes more enthusiasm than the people actually working on the mission, so earlier this year the outreach team packed a van and toured 15 cities in California, they called it InSight Roadshow. - We're here in San Francisco at the Exploratorium, and this is part of the InSight tour, as it's the first interplanetary mission we've launched from California, we're actually doing a lot of public engagement activities throughout California. - We're just talking to the public, telling them about InSight, getting them excited, and sharing information that they probably wouldn't get from the website alone. - We have Mars globes and tech kits, we have replicas of the actual launch vehicle that will take InSight to Mars, we have a selfie station with fun props, people can take pictures.

Children really like Mars. - We have a jump station, where we invite children to come in and jump, we have a small seismometer on the floor, which measures the movement of the ground, so if students can come and jump next to it, they can actually see their own recording on the screen and can cause their own earthquake. - Some people have come to me and told me that this is the most I have understood about a space mission, I am very happy that I came, because now I understand what you are doing, I understand why it is important and I am very excited. - You imagine what it looks like, but seeing it in person puts it into perspective.

She was able to explain a lot of what happens, the cameras, what's hidden underground, it's a great exhibit, you know, both for me and for the kids who want to learn about Mars. - Well, we want you to meet another Mars veteran here at JPL, hardware director Mike Hawkins. You are a mission manager out of curiosity. - Of course, I think this is the fifth Mars mission I've worked on, the fifth Mars lander, so maybe we're finally getting the hang of it. - Does it ever get better, does it get older, is it always the same? - No, it's not like that, I think we are always just as nervous, the whole landing sequence, it's a very crazy moment and we can't do anything, it's this feeling of helplessness because the spaceship is alone. and everything we could do we did a day ago, so I think you always have that nervousness, but we have confidence in the team, we have confidence in the engineers and scientists that they did everything they could do, and it has to be done. put it in your hands. - And it's our eighth successful landing, so we learn from this, we learn a little more and we will do much better next time. - Of course, we have had a failure, we learn from failures too, we learned from all the failures of all the missions, even if they are not JPL or NASA missions, each one of them tells you a little something, an extra. test that you have to do, one additional thing that you have to protect yourself against in the atmosphere of Mars or when landing, and so we have learned from all this, and fortunately recently we have had a lot of success. - And we are always trying something new, we are always trying to learn something new, this time we had a situation, Odyssey couldn't be on site to provide us bent pipe communications, and that's how MarCO came about. - MarCO is just an incredible success story, as you said we couldn't get Mars Odyssey to do the tube bending in real time for the EDL events, we would have had to wait a couple of hours and get the replay from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. , so we embarked on this crazy idea of ​​building these two little Cubesats, and Cubesats or something that high school kids can build nowadays, they go up and orbit the Earth, these are the first interplanetary Cubesats, the first time that we do.

They sent Cubesats out of Earth's orbit, and their only purpose was to do broadcasting, so they had this cool expanded flat antenna there, and they transmitted the UHF signals to us in real time, and it was just incredible, it was built by a lot of people who starts his career here at JPL with a little adult supervision, but no, the engineers just did a fantastic job at MarCO, they exceeded all of our wildest expectations, they worked perfectly, we built two because we thought maybe one will get there, both they got there, they both worked, it's just a great tribute to the whole MarCO team, you saw them there, they had special black t-shirts, just something fantastic, and it didn't just work for this. mission, but I think it opens the door to more small missions like that, we could actually put cameras and other instruments on them, they are much less expensive, so I think there is a whole new door, we just opened a door to a whole new class of planetary science, thanks to MarCO. - And the Cubesats were simply made from off-the-shelf parts. - Some combination of commercially available parts and some new things we made.

We had to build the special radio, of course, because it has to communicate with the deep space network. Antennas are a bit of a new technology, but many things are pretty standard and can be replicated at a much lower cost. - So what do you think in terms of other missions in the future carrying their own relays and not having to rely on a bent tube from an orbiter? - They could carry relays, they could even carry scientific instrumentation, they can do more than just relay, they can take photographs, they could do spectrometry, they could do a lot of other things that we would like to do with orbiters, so there is a possibility that we could send them to Venus , we could send them to asteroids, we could send them to Mars, there are a lot of things we could do and I think we are just learning the capability of what we could miniaturize and what we could put into these Cubesats.

But this is a great first effort. - Of course, well we have a question for you, it's a social media question from nine year old George Kay from the UK, how long did it take to plan and build this mission, InSight? - Well, that's a great question, so I have two answers to that, InSight itself, normally our missions take, from the time we start the mission to the time we launch it, is about four to five years, In the case of InSight two things happened. One in our favor and one not in our favor. The first is that we had a lot of legacy from a mission called Phoenix.

A lot of the design work had already been done, because it was done for this Phoenix mission, and even before that for the Mars Polar Lander, so we inherited a lot of the basic design for this mission. On the other hand, we were a little unlucky because the instruments, the seismometer, are so incredibly precise and difficult to build that we couldn't get it ready, so we're doing it collaboratively. With the French and many other countries in Europe, including the UK, Switzerland and others, we couldn't prepare it for launch, so we had to wait two years, then it took two more years.

Because of that, Mars and Earth are only lined up to launch every 26 months, so we had to wait another 26 months, so it took a little bit longer. - Well, speaking of the international ones, that's a perfect transition to where we go next, throughout this program we have been trying to introduce you to the people behind the scenes, and for the InSight mission it requires us to go beyond our borders . This is truly an international mission. Let me introduce you to Dominico Giardini, a Swiss Italian scientist who studies earthquakes and earthquakes. - And that association goes far beyond individual scientists, look at this, it's an image of the calibration tool on the deck of the InSight Lander, it's what the team uses to calibrate cameras on Mars and look at the flags and logos . , its recognition of our international partnerships with the French government space agency CNES and also with the German aerospace center DLR, and it is my pleasure to welcome the site's project manager, Philippe Laudet, from CNES, and member of the executive board, Hans Dittus, of the DLR.

So I can't imagine a better day, what was your reaction? - A great day, yes. - So I am very excited, I am very grateful for all the people on the mission, also for my people who go to the team, the CNES team and the scientific team, now we have a basic picture of the terrain, and now the work is starting to deploy the seismometer, so a new adventure in the best conditions, thank you for that. - Definitely a new adventure. Hans Dittus, what you are feeling, the HP cube is on that platform, it will be ready to go. - Yes, now it's our job, but first in the fall I would like to congratulate our partners here in the US, and this was a great day and they did a great job, it's not easy to land on Mars, that's what I know, and it's a dream for me too, because the first time we land on Mars with an instrument, at least as I've experienced it, it's a great day, and it's really exciting so far, now the work begins for us. - Philippe, you once said, you are also a musician, he plays jazz, you see exploration and music very similar, what do you think? - Yes, they are very similar, because the human management of all that activity is exactly the same, the technique is different, you have a seismometer or you have an orchestra, but the raw issue of finding the best talents and things like that is the same. , and delivering on time, being ready and having the best performances, everything is similar. - And we should let people know that we won't be able to collect science right away, is that correct? - Yes. - We will be collecting science, in a few months? - The deployment is going to take about two or three months, of course we will have some data during the deployments, but the best data to do the best science will be at the beginning of March. - Okay, then... - So let's get ready now. - We prepare now. - Yes, now is the time, but so far it has been a great job also for our team, and our teams, all the teams, and as you said, it takes a lot of people to take it to Mars and carry out a successful mission. - Well, I have to congratulate you. - Thank you. - Thank you. - Thanks for being with us.

Well, here's another profile: Meet Ravi Prakash. His job is to keep InSight healthy on Mars. - We can explore the universe and see things that no one has seen before. My name is Ravi Prakash and my job is to keep InSight healthy when it's on Mars. InSight is the first spacecraft that will go to Mars and try to understand how the planets formed.rocky planets. A healthy InSight spacecraft is healthy batteries; We have heaters throughout our spacecraft that keep it warm enough for it to function as it should. We observe these things, as well as many other parts of our spacecraft, daily to make sure our mission is successful.

There are thousands of people working at InSight, so systems engineers are responsible for understanding how a change in one part of the spacecraft propagates throughout the system and how that affects all other parts of the spacecraft. In fact, I worked at JPL for eight years and then left for about three years to work at a nonprofit, where I used my engineering and design skills that I learned at NASA to help people in poverty. I realize that the things we do here impact billions of people around the world, every person, whether they realize it or not, has been impacted by NASA technology.

We are the next generation of explorers. - Very well, let's meet Ravi Prakash in person. Ravi is in our testing area at JPL In Situ Instrument Laboratory, and wait a minute Ravi, where did that beard come from? - Hi Gay, there were about 10 of us who decided, the day we launched to Mars, that we would shave and then not shave again for seven months until we landed on Mars, so I'm very excited to have landed. Not only because we have a mission on the surface of Mars, but I have two girls at home who love pulling my beard, so I can finally put an end to that. - Very good, then Ravi helps us, what happens next?

Now clearly InSight is not out of the woods yet, correct? - Yes, of course, we have some very important steps ahead, the first is that we have to deploy our solar panels, this is what the spacecraft is doing right now, it is deploying these two solar panels so that we obtain energy from the sun. , this is one of the most important things we have to do now. After that, we'll do a series of checks on our spacecraft to make sure everything survived this harrowing entry, descent and landing on Mars, and then once that's complete, over the next few days we'll begin deploying our instruments on the surface of Mars. - So what exactly does the deployment of the instrument entail? - This is the first time we have used a robotic arm to place instruments on the surface of Mars.

This is a process that will put our seismometer on Mars as well as the heat flow probe, and it ends up taking about three months, which seems like a long time, but this is because we have to be very careful and make sure everything happens exactly As it should, unlike on Earth, we can't send a technician if something goes wrong, so we just want to do it right the first time. - Very good, and in our interview we just heard that we may not have science until March. - That's right, we get a certain amount of science immediately as to the Mars environment, we get wind data, temperature data, magnetometer data, but then once we start getting seismic data, that will be in the March period. - And can you explain to me Ravi, the ISL, the test bank you are in, what you do there? - This is a Martian test zone, for the last two years we have had a great team that has been testing the deployment of our instruments on a variety of different slopes and rocks, now that we are on Mars, we are going to transform this area. to make it look exactly like the place where we landed and test the deployment of our instruments one more time before doing it in reality. - Very good, thank you Ravi, congratulations. - Thank you so much. - Now that InSight is on Mars, it means some changes, InSight no longer travels to Mars, so the team no longer needs the cruise mission support area;

Soon, the team will hand over operations to a new group located at another JPL. control room, this is the Surface Mission Support Area. It's in another building here at JPL, this is where the team will operate InSight from now on. So the handover is the final step, and that will take place at approximately one o'clock our time, there is approximately half an hour left, for us it is time to say goodbye, our congratulations to the InSight team and a special thanks to our EDL . Systems engineers Christine Szalai and Julie Wertz Chen expect a press conference on NASA TV at 2 p.m.

Pacific Time and 5 p.m. Eastern Time, and for those of you who want the latest information about InSight and Mars, go to Mars.NASA.gov /InSight and NASA.gov/Mars, and thank you to everyone who shared photos on social media, it was wonderful to share this historic event with you, we have some photos for you that We will leave, enjoy and congratulations. Knowledge.