Gadgetory

after traveling through space for more than six months and crossing 300 million miles in sight has reached its destination the red planet Mars welcome to Mission Control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on dayley Hill less than an hour from now in sight we'll begin the most harrowing six and a half minutes of the entire mission udl entry descent and landing the team is as prepared as it can be but who knows what Mars has in store today the crews Mission Support area is filled with engineers monitoring the situation and for the first time during a Mars landing you can be in the room - we have a 360-degree camera in this control room allowing you to experience the landing right along with the team there you see it and to look up the link just go to the insight watch page you see there on the screen and this mission has actually two control rooms the second is at Lockheed Martin space outside of Denver Colorado engineers there are on council two plus people all over the world are tuning in at museums and libraries and other locations including this one at the Pasadena Convention Center and that is where friends and family are watching right now there will also be an opportunity to watch in New York City there they are cheering there will be also an opportunity to watch in New York City when landing coverage gets displayed on the Nasdaq tower you see there in Times Square and of course if you are watching please snap a picture and share it with us using the hashtag Mars landing we'd love to see it now I'd like to introduce you to NASA Administrator Jim Bryden Stein thank you for coming oh it's my honor so excited to have you here so this is your first Mars line it is in this job no I'm right I have witnessed these as I should say from the sidelines for many years this is going to be the eighth time that we have a successful landing on Mars everybody knock on wood but this is the first time for me to participate as the administrator so it's very exciting very much not nervous excited look at their amazing people here no way I could be nervous all right so we hope to have you back on set after landing and maybe take a couple of social media questions absolutely all right if you would like to ask the administrator a question use the hash Tagg asked NASA and before you go you did ask about the lucky peanuts so this is your bottle take in they're happily munching on these all right thanks for joining us now let's give you some background inside in short is short for interior exploration using seismic investigations geodesy and heat transport it's different from other Mars missions which all studied the surface insight is the first mission to study the interior of the red planet the basic idea of insight is to map out the deep structure of Mars we know a lot about the surface of Mars we know a lot about its atmosphere and even about its ion asphere but we don't know very much about what goes on a mile below the surface much less 2,000 miles below the surface down to the center and this will be the first mission that's going to Mars specifically to investigate the deep inside of Mars we know that the earth is habitable we know that Mars is not there might be something that we find out in terms of the structure of Mars versus the structure of Earth that maybe can help us understand why that is inside carries a seismometer which measures the seismic waves that have traveled through Mars from Mars quakes and maps out the deep interior structure of Mars we're gonna also have a heat flow and physical properties probe which will penetrate into the Mars surface about 5 meters or 16 feet to take the temperature of Mars and it has a radio science experiment which uses the radio on the spacecraft to measure small variations in the wobble of Mars as Pole to understand more about the structure and composition of the core insite will be the first mission to pick instruments up off the deck of the lander and place them on the surface of Mars I like to say that we're playing the claw game on Mars with no joysticks the seismometer needs to be installed in one place and basically not move in order to get the best seismic data we also have a wind and thermal shield that will then be placed on top of that seismometer to protect it further from the environment for the heat flow probe HP cube it also needs to sit in one place take a while to hammer itself down into the ground and acquire the thermal measurements over a long period of time insight is a mission to Mars but it's much much more than a Mars mission in some sense it's like a time machine it's measuring the structure of Mars it was put in place four and a half billion years ago so we can go back and understand the processes that warn Mars just shortly after it was accreted from the solar nebula by studying Mars we'll be able to learn more about earth Venus mercury even the moon even exoplanets around other stars landing on Mars is always difficult more than half the missions have failed our experts in this field are systems engineers for entry descent and landing they speak EDL let me introduce you to two in our control room kristine Soleil who will be making the mission call-outs during landing and Julie warts gem she is our color commentator who will help explain mission operations christine let's start with you I understand that there was a final software update and adjustment what does that mean that's right yesterday we sent the last EDL software parameter update to the spacecraft's computer this update told the spacecraft exactly when it will hit the top of the atmosphere and also fine-tuned things like when to deploy the parachute this EDL software is very important because insight uses this software to perform entry descent and landing completely on its own Mars is so far away from Earth that when a command from Earth it takes about eight minutes for it to reach the spacecraft entry descent and landing from start to finish is less than eight minutes long so insight has to do this all by itself alright its fate is sealed now I understand that the team is about to do a readiness pull Julie can you fill us in on that sure so that's gonna be a poll between our ETL communications engineer and several of the different orbiters and antennas that we have here on earth so we have Marco listening in on 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 eavesdropping in on our signal from all the way back here on earth and sandi our EDL communications engineer will be checking in with them making sure that they're all ready to go ready to support us and just a little you know under an hour to land on Mars all right so we're standing by for that for the readiness pull and I understand that the peanuts are going to be passed in there pretty soon I believe us that that's the idea yeah we'll be passing around the peanuts very soon after that for those of you who don't know the JPL peanuts are a tradition that gives us a little bit of extra luck on our critical events so if anybody out there wants to join in on peanuts and give us some extra good good luck peanut vibe we'd love to have it well there's a story behind that that way back when in the early days of JPL there were several missions and there were six Ranger missions to the moon that failed yep but then with Ranger seven or seven somebody somebody passed around people yeah yeah and it worked and you don't mess with what works so it's not a superstition it's a tradition we just give ourselves that little bit of extra luck all right so yeah if you have peanuts at home please have some that's right all right thanks Julie nASA has had seven successful Mars landings but the EDL team never ever becomes overconfident JPL chief engineer Rob Manning says things have to work just right during six have critical minutes although we've done it before landing on Mars is hard and this mission is no different the process to get from the top of the atmosphere of Mars to the surface we call entry descent and landing or EDL it takes thousands of steps to go from the top of the atmosphere to the surface and each one of them has to work perfectly to be a successful mission the process starts well above the top of the atmosphere of Mars the cruise stage faces the Sun it also has its radio antenna which faces earth but now we don't need the crew stage its job is done the next step just seven minutes before arriving to the top of the Mars atmosphere is to separate the crews stage before you hit the top the atmosphere though the space capsule has to orient itself so the heat shield is precisely faced to the atmosphere now the fun begins the vehicle is moving at nearly 13,000 miles an hour but it's hitting the top of Matmos here at a very shallow angle 12 degrees any steeper the vehicle will hit the thicker part of the atmosphere and will melt and burn out any shallower the vehicle will balance off the atmosphere of Mars at the very top the atmosphere it's about 70 miles above the surface of Mars and the air is starting to get thicker and thicker and thicker as it does that the temperature of the heat shield gets well over a thousand degrees centigrade enough to melt steel over the next two minutes the vehicle decelerates at a back-breaking 12 Earth Gees from 13,000 miles an hour to about 1,000 miles at about 10 miles above the surface of Mars a supersonic parachute is washed out of the back of the vehicle 15 seconds after the parachute inflates it's time to get rid of the heat shield six pyrotechnic devices fire simultaneously allowing the heat shield to fall and tumble away from the via exposing the lander to the surface of Mars 10 seconds after the heat shield is dropped three pyro technically deployed legs are released and locked for landing about a minute later the landing radar is turned on sending pulses toward the surface of Mars as the vehicle starts to try to measure how high it is above the surface and how fast it's going out about a mile above the surface of Mars the lander falls away from the back show and like this entrance and very quickly the vehicle must rotate out of the way so that the parachute and the back shelf doesn't come down to hit it the last thing that has to happen is that on the moment of contact the engines have to shut down immediately if they don't the vehicle will tip over so of all the steps of entry descent and landing happen perfectly and we are safely on the surface of Mars we'll be ready to do some exciting new science person later on in the program meantime let me introduce you to someone who has been working on insight for seven years he's the project manager Tom Hoffman 7 years and today's the day that's right 7 years but we're just a little over you know 40 minutes now and we're going to be on the surface gonna be awesome really exciting all right so let's talk about insight it's using tried-and-true technologies based on Phoenix this time there's a bigger challenge with communication correct normally we have an orbiter that can give us vent pipe communications but it's different this time that's right most of the time when we've landed recently we've had Mars Odyssey which can do bent pipe communications and so we get real-time data as we go through ETL and we've come to expect that and actually we really really want that in this case our primary technology primary orbiter is Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and so what that's going to be doing is actually well be listening to us on the UHF if you go to the video you can see this emerald will be listening to us and beginning all the primary data and it will send it back to us unfortunately only at three hours after we land so it doesn't give us the bent pipe live information we have a couple of other sources that we're looking at we have a green bake observatory in West Virginia Max Planck observatory and EPEL spur Germany which will be giving us UHF but those only give us a couple of different points in time and so we did something kind of cool this time we brought along a couple cube SATs called Marco and so hopefully they're both working great today Oh fantastic so we're hoping that they're gonna continue to work all the way through EDL and they well be giving us real-time feed so we can show how that works on the next video here so you can see here's insight with its crude stage getting close to Mars but we have two stalkers following us they've been following us since we launched they launched on the same launch vehicle as s and so you can see the green there is we're sending UHF signals to them and then they turn that around it's in a much stronger signal back to earth we can't communicate on UHF direct to Earth with a signal that tells what's going on in the spacecraft that Marco can if it works for us all the way down to the surface we're gonna have some great information coming from Marcos so Marco is basically trying to fill that gap that we would have had if we had live communication coming down to us absolutely so if it does not work does it affect insight mission at all no not at all we'll just be doing a little more nail-biting but right now it looks like it's gonna it's gonna be working but it doesn't impact insight at all and we have one final way that we're gonna know that we've got successfully the ground which is the spacecraft will phone home okay once it gets down to the ground it's gonna have gone seven months through crews seven and a half minutes of tear and it's gonna call back and say hey I'm on the surface I'm feeling pretty good everything looks good so far and also to prep the audience they're not even after landing we're not out of the woods just yet correct not just yet we have one more step that we have to do we have to let the dust settle quite literally we're gonna kick up a lot of dust when we land we need to let that dust settle before we want to unfurl our solar rays we're 100% solar-powered so it's very important that we get those out unfortunately both MRO and Marco will be out of view by the time that we have those completely unfurled and so we're gonna have to wait five and a half hours until Odyssey comes by and tells us that yes indeed our solar arrays are so we'll definitely have a celebration when we get successful landing but we're going to have to temper that just a little bit and wait about five and a half hours so now absolutely for sure we're in good shape so we have immediate knowledge if we have the Marko's so just to run it through it once again what's going to happen with EDL we've got some we have the video the show how exactly is this all going to play out in six and a half minutes and we can roll the video okay yeah so you can see here we're attached to the crew stage we drop that off say thank you for the ride to Mars it burns up in the atmosphere you can see it gets very hot on our heat shield we're getting up in some places maybe 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit as we go through this we're on the heat shield for about four minutes that dissipates about 90% of the energy that we need to dissipate before we get to the surface then we pop our parachute we're going about 850 miles an hour when we pop the parachute we're on that for about two minutes then we'll drop off the heat shield we'll start acquiring the ground with our radars very much like an f-16 fighter jet radar the legs will pop out we'll start descending we drop for just a second which is very terrifying for me our descent thrusters we have 12 of them there's sixty eight pound thrusters start thrusting and dropping us to the ground and slowly slowly we drop down going only five miles an hour so in that six and a half minutes of Terror which is a little less than the seven minutes so that's great for me we go from twelve thousand three hundred miles an hour at seventy-five miles above the surface of Mars we get to the surface for five and a half miles an hour that's amazing that's absolutely amazing well before you go Tom there was a couple of pictures we wanted to show you we have watch parties taking place all over the country and let's see if we can put one of these watch parties up for you to see this is from Ohio this is a person who has a watch party it looks like in a classroom that is so awesome isn't that great that folks are watching with us yeah I know people all across the globe want to put on a good show phone today all right well I'll let you back in all right all right take care thanks for joining us okay let's introduce you to the people who built insight Lockheed Martin space outside of Denver these are the folks who built Viking in 1976 and Mars Phoenix in 2008 the operations team is there and Lockheed inside EDL manager Tim Lynn is standing by Tim what's going on in there team's getting really excited we're just about ready or what about a half an hour from entry and the start of entry descent landing so the team is really excited focused but also very excited about the upcoming successful entry descent landing where we're getting close to well we talked about the fact that insight is based on tried-and-true technology it's based on Phoenix but you've had to make a couple of changes for inside what were they yeah we've so obviously as you said we leveraged Phoenix a lot there was a lot of great things that were able to take from the Phoenix mission but insight is a unique mission its landing towards the equator of Mars and a number of things are different the where we're landing we're about one and a half kilometers higher in altitude in addition and so what that's required us to do is actually to come in a little bit more shallow in addition we're a little bit heavier than than Phoenix was so we've had to increase some of the strength of some of the lander itself so the parachute we have had to increase the strength we actually deploy the parachute a little bit higher because of some of the differences in our entry time line and because of when we're landing we're landing them towards the end of dust season so we also have actually increased the thickness of the heat shield so we're about a quarter inch thick around our heat shield to accommodate that that potential sandblasting that we could see when we actually do our entry descent landing so a number of things we've changed but we've obviously leveraged a lot from the very successful Phoenix mission as well that's fantastic so you were able to kind of customize it because there were some concerns earlier on that there was a death storm taking place it was dust storm season that's right in fact we've had a lot of great support from our orbiting assets MRO and Odyssey a couple of spacecraft that we've partnered with JPL and that were built here at Lockheed Martin they've actually provided a lot of great insight into into the weather on Mars any dust storms that are potentially happening on Mars and as of today and have actually the last couple of weeks it's been great on the surface of Mars we're anticipating a very nominal very seasonal weather in terms of both density atmosphere as well as temperature and dust storms appear to be very benign sore very optimistic it's gonna be a great day for landing on the surface of Mars all right that's great news thanks Tim and I know your team is getting excited over there just as much as we are absolutely yeah thanks a lot okay the time now is 11 21 it's about 20 minutes the tension is building in both control rooms it's about 20 minutes before crews stage separation it's not too far off whose stage separation is expected at about 40 minutes past the hour so we are indeed getting close so where is insite going to Mars it's a place called Elysium panacea Benicia is Latin for flat Elysium is ancient Greek for afterlife paradise it's located near the equator north of Gale Crater not too far from Curiosity rover the team calls it the biggest parking lot on Mars it's a place that safe got plenty of sunshine that will power solar instruments to study the interior of Mars what's inside Mars we know a lot about what's inside earth but at Mars we've only just scratched the surface to learn how Mars formed we have to study its deep interior NASA's insight Lander was designed to do just that by taking the planets vital signs listening for its pulse or seismic activity including any marsquakes taking its temperature to see how much heat is flowing out from deep inside and checking its reflexes to see how much the planet wobbles as it whips around the Sun these all provide clues to what the planet is really like inside so what's inside Mars insight can help us find out by giving Mars its first thorough checkup since it formed four and a half billion years ago the more we learn the better we'll understand all the rocky planets and the history of our solar system joining us now is Bruce Benner the principal investigator of Mars insight insight is a mission to Mars but we keep hearing again again it's more than a mission to Mars that's right Jay I mean we're going to Mars obviously to study the Martian interior and to map out the divisions inside Mars but we want to use that information to understand more about the solar system as a whole and how rocky planets formed and rocky planets we have an image to show folks so we're talking about Earth the moon Mars Venus yes the the planets of the inner solar system that are made mostly of rocks and they all share the same basic structure with a dense iron core a rocky mantle and then a crust of lighter silicate rocks but the very details of the thicknesses of those layers the sizes and the the compositions give us a lot of clues as to how those planets form and why they went down very different paths and into the different planets we see today so explain to me we are going to have a lander you're going to be on the surface how would you be able to study the interior well we use where it called geophysical instruments they use the principles of physics to actually see through the rocks I mean we're using seismic waves the same way you might use a flashbulb to take pictures of something we're using Mars quakes which send out vibrational waves through the planet and as they go through the planet they reflect off boundaries they get bent they change their velocity and it Changez The Wiggles that you see on a seismogram when we go through the planet you can see that here it hits the various boundaries and those waves are reflected sometimes they're bent it becomes a pretty complicated pattern but scientifically we've learned over the the last hundred years how to interpret the the code of the signals it comes back up to the surface and the seismogram the seismometers pick up that signal and then turn it into data that we can use on earth to understand you know what the 3-d structure is of the planet so normally you use three seismometers in this case you're bringing SycE that's one how are you going to be able to get that information using one well we had to get kind of clever because on the earth you know usually you have plenty of seismometers you can use multiple seismometers to to triangulate in on where the earthquake is on mars we're gonna do something a little bit different we're going to use not only the the P and the S waves that you may have heard about but we're using the surface waves and here you can see the surface waves kind of moving out from Mars quake and as it passes over the insight Lander you can see the seismogram up there in the upper left-hand corner where you have the the Wiggles now those waves keep on going around the planet and because Mars is not so so large there still have a they still have a fair amount of amplitude they haven't gotten completely damped out by the time it's gone all the way around the planet passes over this the the spacecraft again and finally even the way that went but the other way around the planet comes across and hits us yet a third time and so we have extra information over just the P and the S wave we have the surface wave arrivals that we can use to pinpoint the distance from the Mars quake to our lander and then we use something called polarization analysis to figure out 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 the earth just using the P and the S waves and very quickly there is still another instrument built by DLR that's also being carried up by inside can you talk a little bit about that yeah that's our heat flow probe and it's a pretty cool instrument that uses a Kanaka mole we call it to burrow its way down into the surface it has a motor with a that that winds up a hammer and it knocks itself down just a few millimeters at a time but we do that twenty or thirty thousand hammer strokes and it gets us down we hope to get down to be about sixteen feet below the surface and once we get down there we're actually measuring the heat coming out of the planet by measuring the temperature along the cable as it comes up to the surface and looking at how that that heat that temperature increases as we go down and extrapolate that deep into the plant to understand how much energy there is inside the planet to drive the geology and the drive vulcanism Mars quakes all kinds of activity it's amazing how much you'll be able to learn from the surface about the interior that's right I think it's it is amazing and it's been something that I've been working on for my whole professional career and it's just I I find it fascinating but all right we'll talk about that thanks very first first thought of a mission like this as he mentions 40 years ago when he was a graduate student the rest the team hasn't waited quite that long but this is a big moment for them too recently we sat down with a few of the members and asked them what is it going to be like as we get close to landing it's a very difficult thing to do and everything has to go perfectly as humans we've sent 17 different missions to the surface 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 used to ensure that the spacecraft is delivered to the right point at the top of the Martian atmosphere the target location faced about 12 kilometers in size our accuracy is comparable to shooting a basketball from Staples Center in downtown LA and hitting nothing but net in a basketball hoop in New York City that is moving at our speed of about two feet per second and it's spinning about its axis cuz landing site you know we have an ellipse oh it's pretty big it's about 60 miles long we could land anywhere in that ellipse there's a chance that we command right on a rock and we don't really have any control over that so that's what makes me nervous we've tested the radar by flying it on a helicopter we've tested pieces of the heat shield by putting them in an arc jet facility we've tested the parachute by testing it in a wind tunnel and putting all that together in a very tightly controlled sequence where every single thing has to go right we've never tested that and the first time that's gonna happen is wants you to live arrest two motors it is about 11:20 9:00 a.m. Pacific and you're watching live coverage of the insight landing from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena California we are about a half hour away from landing and people all over the world are watching take a look at the map that we have for you we can show you right now this is a watch in-person map where people have watch parties all over the world all over the United States in Paris and Berlin even off the coast of Madagascar and folks in the Big Apple will also be watching today the Nasdaq tower will switch over to landing coverage for about an hour that means people in Times Square can watch too and later today NASA will have the honor of ringing the closing bell and that will be a little over an hour from now and if you are watching take a picture and send it to us using hashtag Mars landing here is one I believe it is from the California Science Center in Los Angeles and I am told Mayor Eric Garcetti will be visiting later today things are getting more active for the team now let's check back in with Julie warts chin in the control room what's going on Julie yeah so we've heard from MRO a couple of times that's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter they are doing their slew they're ready to support us they're doing great and we heard from both marcos marco a and b that they're out there there we've got telemetry lock with them from the ground stations here so they're doing great and everybody's ready to go so we're pretty excited fantastic we will check back in with Julie in a moment meantime this is a good time to tell you a little bit more about that technology experiment we've been talking about Marco as we mentioned earlier insight does not have an orbiter in position to send EDL data back live so the cube sets hope to fill that gap here's how the work communicating between Mars and Earth requires a complicated choreography with everything in the right place at the right time sometimes hours can pass before information is relayed from one planet to the other that's why when NASA's Mars insight Lander launches this year the rocket will carry two tiny satellites on a technology test of their 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 they test out new miniaturized technologies and if they make it to Mars they could relay information back to earth about insights descent and touchdown and do it in mere minutes although this fast communication isn't crucial to the success of the insight Lander this CubeSat test could change the way future spacecraft phone home alright let's check back with Julie to see if the Marcos are indeed ready to support and listen for insight Julie what do you know so they are they are ready to go I haven't heard about their slew coming up yet but they are ready to go we've heard from them they're both healthy and they're both doing great which is just wonderful news so I think they should be doing a slew and justment actually yeah I think they should be doing a slew with just a minute well stand by and listen then all stations the systems we can't confirm we are entry - 20 minutes ETL nav - has been initiated the star tracker has been powered off the nav 2 software has been initially initiated so when we're in cruise we use a star tracker in a similar manner 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 that anymore so we're gonna transition to what's called nav 2 software and that lets us basically just use velocity and acceleration from this point on so we don't need the started slew to appropriate attitude for bent pipe that pipe mode will be entered shortly okay thank you very much and that was obviously our confirmation of the slew for Marco so that's great news and tastic so I was saying before they'll be the NAB 2 software rule propagate from here on out and we'll use velocity and acceleration so we have powered off our star tracker and we're on our now 2 software and everything's looking great okay thanks thanks Julie thanks all right the cruise stage separation is just about 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 for you right now you haven't seen it yet but we'll roll it there you are you're the phase lead you're sitting up front yeah that's why it looked like it and it's successful yes I hate to see whatever good like if I wasn't successful but talk about that what is EDL like why is it so hard well it's many years of work by many many people who struggle to put all the pieces together and particularly because we can't really test Antron descent and landing on this planet it's much more complicated Mars has a lower atmosphere thicket thinner atmosphere less e gravity Marco you just can't put the pieces so it's imagine you had a big Broadway production mark would be really one little show until all the audience shows up so that's what it feels like so it's so you never really know if you've really done it right well we've done it seven times can we say that a piece of cake we know what we're doing no I don't think so I mean yeah we get better at it and there's no doubt we've learned we've learned for both the successes and our own failures including failures of other missions outside of this country so those pieces come together in our minds I we try to put what we learn together and 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 we if something bad happens today we will be able to take what we learned even though we may fall on the ground after we get kicked off the horse we'll get back up brush ourselves off figure what we did wrong and get back on the horse well there's a lot of uncertainty just very quickly give us some possible scenarios of what could happen during EDL today especially during communications well the the the great news about having communications there's almost almost anything that go wrong we there's a very good chance we'll figure it out but things like you know the parachute has to go right we know you don't open parachutes on earth and going Mach one and a half one and a half times the speed of sound you just don't do that you don't need to in this planet but we have to because if we waited any longer we'd be on the ground very complicated radar system has to work outer space all the way to the ground and look for look for the ground what if it locked up on the heat shield well we've tried to avoid that problem we fixed that problem we think it to prevent that from happening but what if we got it wrong things like that could could happen and our vehicle could have things bad happen but we worked hard this time we separate in systems video , the hex court at this time MRO has full have bloated their electro sequences Marco is expecting carry lock at any time Marco B is reported there in bent pipe still waiting on a copy that thank you for your science report UHF carrier detected ETL con marco clubs in fight mode Marco Bravo has locks on the carrier Marco Alfa has also locked on carrier system based on inside cord as expected the DSN has el oso inside expand copy that thank you all station insight systems on inside court DSN is lost the x-band signal from insight indicated expected crew stage separation standing by for UHF signal acquisition via Marko or radio science we are about five minutes from entry and have confirmation we've lost the x-band signal from insights this was expected because we have transitioned from the antenna on the cruise stage to the UHF antenna onboard the spacecraft ground stations have detected the UHF signal and Marko has lost on the signal this confirms that insight is transmitting UHF signals as expected in sight telemetry through the Marko relay is not expected until about two minutes before entry the vehicle has also performed the turn to entry maneuver the vehicle is turning away from a Sun pointing attitude and oriented itself to enter the Martian atmosphere this is a big first step getting just getting the the cruise stage separated it's now after the vehicle turns itself to the right orientation the cruise stage is now going to be get further and further away until it's about three or four football fields away and will burn up in parallel as the vehicle enters Mars and Christine mentioned turn to entry what does that mean it was because the cruise stage has to be pushed off to one side like this the rest of the vehicle has to turn to face the atmosphere and to be dead nuts on as it hits hits the the top of the atmosphere so this is taking all the heat coming into the atmosphere exactly it'll be both provided source for drag but also thermal protection because it gets over 1500 degrees Celsius on the top of this heat shield very very hot but on the inside a heat shield is maybe only a fraction of a few degrees above room temperature so it's a wonderful protective device to keep our you're safe all right so the next thing we're standing by for is is entering through the gun at the top of the atmosphere gradually slowing down right now the vehicles just now beginning to look very soon will be beginning to feel the atmosphere touching it actually entry is above the atmosphere slightly so it's really not until a few half a minute or so before after entry before we start really detecting the fact that that atmosphere is slowing us down all right we'll be standing by yes exciting entry is scheduled for 1147 the cruise dates SEP and the entry times are locked in correct they are they're locked in when we selected the target and aim the vehicle very precisely that allows to know exactly when we hit the entry point which is 35 55 kilometers from the center of Mars so we know those times are locked in but what about all the other events that take place regi science reports dropping carrier power effect Marconi and Marco B ham telemetry just heard both Marcos have telemetry they are doing their job these small CubeSat sir relaying ones and zeros with a few seconds lag from from the vehicle up to the up to these two vehicles and they reach forward them back to earth to the Deep Space Network using x-band antenna and keep in mind this was all in an experiment we weren't sure that this was going to work but we had this need that we didn't have live communication in this particular mission well we don't really need communications we don't need their information except if something went wrong we would very much like to get the data right now we have others telemetry via the Marco relay watch the data flowing under their screens as if they're commuting directly data will provide detailed information about the state of the spacecraft throughout ETL we were on pins and needles waiting for that because we weren't really sure this is wonderful news this this will allow us to give some just continues working all the way to the ground and beyond we might even see a first picture from the surface of Mars very soon atmospheric entry on my mark three two one mark so in a few seconds the vehicle will start sensing the atmosphere I said thirty five twenty two kilometers from the center of Mars and it's going to start to slow down very very slowly at first but then faster and faster and faster till to it to reach us about seven G's I made that mistake in the video it's actually seven G's not twelve and so it will but will still very very quickly slow down and from fifteen in approximately one minute inside is expected to reach its maximum heating rate plasma blackout is possible during peak heating and could cause a temporary drop out of telemetry this could last for as long as two minutes yeah the gas that comes off the heat shield as it's slowing down it looks like a meteor if you're on Mars watching this streak go by that brightness of gas does interfere with the radio reception and so it's possible that Marco will lose that signal while it's going through this very hot entry but not to be alarmed not to be alarmed it's it's part of the design we expected radio science reports plasma blackouts as expected okay Wow Brown stations have reported plasma blackout still receiving insight telemetry via Marco Marco alpha has carrier interruption in sight should now be experiencing the peak heating rates portions of the heat shield may reach nearly 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit as it protects the lander from the heating environment that's hot Michael promises carrier interruption but still in luck inside has passed through peak deceleration telemetry shows the spacecraft saw about 8g echo alpha and Marco Bravo a rock radio science reports carrier detected communications coming in inside is now traveling at a velocity of 2,000 meters per second it seems to pass this very critical point of peak heating and peak deceleration the next big step is parachute inflation the next event is parachute deploy inside is now traveling at 1,000 meters per second once insight slows to about 400 meters per second it will deploy its 12 meter diameter supersonic parachute the parachute will deploy nominally at about Mach 1.7 standing by for parachute deploy radio science reports sudden changing Doppler ground stations are observing signals consistent with parachute deploy Marco Alfa Marco Bravo maintain lock status telemetry shows parachute deployment radar power Don ciccio's separation commanded this is really good news so far into needles we have radar activation where the radar is beginning to search for the ground once the radar locks on the ground and inside is about one kilometer above the surface if the lander will separate from the back shell and begin terminal descent using its 12 descent engines altitude convergence the radar has locked on the ground yes standing by for Lander separation terrier interruption on Marco Alfa and Marco Bravo Lander separation commanded altitude 600 meters gravity turn altitude 400 meters we're doing it 300 meters 200 meters 80 meters 60 meters 50 meters constant velocity 37 meters 30 meters 20 meters 17 meters standing by for touchdown touchdown confirmed [Laughter] this never gets old just erupted great Jim Preiser the key design is locking sandy gravity this is really fabulous thank you something going on in there what oh really we've cut over to the camera over in Times Square boy people are weathering the rain to see this this thing has a lot more to do though it's a lot more to go on both today and in the days that follow before the science can begin but you know just getting vehicle on from earth to the surface of Mars is no mean feat I mean just the mere accomplishment here that we're seeing it's you have to understand that this this this this vehicle is very very complicated it uses 12 engines each of those engines are pulsed ten times a second producing these little tiny impulses almost like little bullets that keep the vehicle going out a constant velocity as like approaches the ground and still going over five miles an hour so those legs feel a fair amount of crush we still don't know the state of the vehicle right now we need to look to make sure there are no rocks nearby the solar panels have to art well being just in just a few in about five to ten minutes we'll begin to open up they have waiting for the dust to settle because the dust was certainly a lot of dust being lifted in the air around the vehicle right now which is now just settling so we're standing by after touchdown it waits a couple of minutes to give us an x-band beep and so we are standing by for that it's a communication that comes directly to earth from insight yes and and it goes to the Deep Space Network there's also something that might be happening now if we're very lucky in sight might be able to relay an image or a parcel image taken just a few a couple of minutes after landing so I'm standing by hoping to see that but if that doesn't happen we'll certainly get more images later in our Odyssey pass you know about five hours we see Bruce Banner waiting for it there I don't know if they see it you're waiting that's that's Justin Maki Bruce Banner looking carefully the cameras to see what they might see you're waiting for the image to come back so this is the first image from insight itself inside is taking a picture with one of us two cameras probably a view of what's directly in front of the spacecraft right from the lander this is a camera that it would be using to figure out is this a good space a good place to put down our instruments so it is going to take an image and send that image to the Marcos the Marcos in turn will relay it back down to earth that's correct I don't see a lot of image has a dust cover on top we have lost the signal for Marco you can see potentially a lot of so we don't know oh there it is you can see a better view you'd see that really is debris near it's the horizon back there de Loup of blueish sky that's part of the lander deck on the front left I can't take out but it looks like there's not a lot of rocks in the field of view but those dots you see there are very likely to be dust particles on the on the lens the dust cover which will be removed yes yes in a better clear view after that dust cutter can move so it incites you know I'm sorry a cube SATs relay communications job is done they're now flying on they're now taking pictures back toward Mars hopefully MRO which flew overhead might have been lucky enough to capture the descent of this insight Lander on its under its parachute while was well well though this is going on tomorrow is flying overhead recording the data like also monitoring the track transactions and recording every bit of signal look good and but it also had the ability to take a picture and maybe look like we did with with you know both Phoenix and later for Curiosity rover we might be able to see the parachute that would be fantastic we are standing by now for that expand beat yes in sight phoning home saying I'm here and I'm okay system based on inside court the DSN and expand radio science reports x-ray and carrier detected copy that Thank You flawless flawless this was perfect case scenario this is this is what we really hoped and imagined in her mind's eye though we spend most of our looking visualizing all these bad things can happen sometimes things work out in your favor and will look very carefully at the data see what might have what how well it went it 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 he's going right and and and as the as the vehicle proceeds the solar panels will be deployed hopefully there's no we're not on a tilt it doesn't look like we are but from the image but the solar panels will be deployed safely we hope and we'll get confirmation of that around five o'clock local time here in about four hour four and a half hours five hours from now this is such a difficult feat in that because of the one-way life time there is no way that any of these engineers could possibly control the vehicle it all has to be done in commands and software we have to train it to do this work on its own so the vehicle is completely nominal reported nominal it is it's happy the lander is not complaining we have we had a way to tell us if it was unhappy and it wasn't it's not unhappy it's quite it's it's it's in a normal mode and so it's gonna chug along for the rest of the rest of the afternoon and finish the activities all right well Rob I know you're anxious to get in and congratulate the group thank you so much for sitting here and helping us out explain UDL all right well I'll let you go and go congratulate your friends all right take care on inside out of the loop recording completed at 24 for 34 all right as we had promised we said we'd bring back the administrator to get your take on what was it like to be in that control room Jim what was it like well I'll tell you it was it was intense and and you could feel the emotion it was very very quiet when it was time to be quiet and of course very celebratory with every little new piece of information that was received it's very different being here than watching it on TV by far I can tell you that for sure now that I've experienced both and then of course you know what's what's amazing is as soon as it was over I got a call on my cell phone and it was the phone number was all zeros and whenever I get a phone call that's all zeros it's got to be somebody important I answered it and it was the vice president he watched the whole thing he is absolutely ecstatic about our program as you're aware he's the chairman of the national space Council and he's been of course a keen advocate for what we do and to have him call within seconds of mission success is tremendous and just so everybody knows he wants me to say congratulations to everybody here at NASA and all of our international partners and everybody who has contributed to this mission what an amazing day for NASA it is an amazing accomplishment in that this is something that is happening millions and millions and millions of miles away and these people are able to do it incredible and what's fascinating is the whole time I'm watching it I'm thinking every milestone is something that happened eight minutes ago because that's the time like to get a signal from Mars to earth and so it's it's kind of you know it's it's it's exciting but then you have to step back and realize that this has already occurred in history so it is it's a unique experience incredible and just the enthusiasm here is incredible so what's for the future looking ahead 2020 well let's get through December so for the rest of this we think about what's happening next December third we're launching American out American astronaut to the International Space Station so that's gonna be a big achievement and it's going to be on a Russian Soyuz rocket that the last time we launched a human was not successful it was scary but we figured out what the problem is we're moving forward and now we've got that underway December 3rd going forward from there we're gonna get the first science data back from the Parker Solar Probe on December 7th so that's not too far away either and then we've got osiris-rex that will be in orbit around Venu shortly after Christmas so no shortage of exciting things and then on January 1st we're gonna fly the New Horizons mission which for people who are not aware that's the mission that went to Pluto back in 2014 gave us stunning images and data and information science on on Pluto and now that mission is still going strong it's it's in the what we call the Kuiper belt now which is an asteroid belt well beyond Pluto and it's going to be taking images of Ultima Thule which is an object in the Kuiper belt Kuiper belt which we we have never been able to go out there and take images of anything at close range before and now we're doing so you ask what's happening next I guess we we have right now at NASA there is more underway probably than I don't know how many how many years past but it's like you know there's a drought and then all of a sudden there's all these activities all at once so we're busy we're gonna be working through the holiday but a lot of amazing discoveries to be made and we're looking forward to it so funny because our ask NASA question you basically answered is does the success of NASA insight influence the timeline for future manned lunar or Mars missions well certainly everything we learn about Mars at this point is going to help us understand how to do in situ resource utilization so insight could actually provide some really good information about whether or not there's liquid water on Mars and maybe even where it is and how to get to it we strongly believe that there's liquid water you know 10 kilometers under the surface of Mars so the the key is the answer is yes the more we learn the more we're able to achieve and so to get to Mars yes but the lunar missions the the you know the president's first space policy directive is to go to the moon to go sustainably with international and commercial partners so when we say sustainably that means we're gonna have reusability built into the system and we're gonna we're gonna test and prove technologies at the moon that ultimately we can replicate at Mars so we're gonna retire risk prove human physiology at the moon which is only a three-day journey which means you know if something goes wrong you can get home safely we saw that with Apollo 13 but we need we need to use the the moon as a proving ground to accelerate our path to Mars in the meantime we're doing missions like insight to learn as much about Mars as possible insight is going to help us understand really asteroid impacts as well you know cuz it's it's got a seismometer well it's just gonna help us know how often is Mars getting impact with asteroids and if we're gonna send humans there it'd be important to know if those humans are gonna experience asteroid impacts so and that's pretty much our goal is always learning from our missions and build upon those mission one after another nASA has a long history of doing just amazing work in building on its past successes and in fact its past failures so I'll tell you what an amazing time to be at the helm of this extraordinary agency we are so glad that you are here to share with us well thanks for joining a true pleasure thank you and I'm sure you need to go in there and celebrate with those folks but thank you for stepping out for absolutely all right take care now Mars exploration is cool stuff but if you're not convinced just yet just talk to the insight scientists and engineers no one conveys the excitement more than the people who actually work on the mission so earlier this year the outreach team filled up a van and went to 15 California cities they called it the insight roadshow so we're here in San Francisco at the Exploratorium and this is part of insights roadshow since it's the first interplanetary mission we've ever launched from California we're actually doing a lot of public engagement activities along California and we're just talking to the public and talking to them about insight and getting them excited and sort of sharing information that they probably wouldn't get just from a website we have Mars clubs and touchable kids we have replicas the actual launch vehicle that's gonna be taking the insight to Mars we have a selfie station with fun props people can take pictures children really really like Mars you have a dump station where we invite kids to come in yeah jump we have a little seismometer on the floor which measures ground motion so if students can come and jump next to it they can actually see they're recording on the screen and they make their own quake I've had people come to me and say this is the most I've ever understood about a space mission I'm so happy I came because now I understand what you're doing I understand why it's important and I'm really excited you kind of imagine how it looks but seeing it in person actually puts it in perspective she was able to explain in love what happens the cameras what goes into the ground it's a great exhibit you know but for myself and also for kids that want to learn about Mars okay we want you to meet another Mars veteran here at JPL our director Mike Watkins you were a mission manager for curiosity absolutely I think this is the fifth Mars mission I've worked on Mars Lander so maybe we're getting the hang of it finally ever get better I mean does it get old it's always the same it doesn't I mean I think we're just as nervous every time you know the whole landing sequence and it's just such a crazy time and and you know we can't do anything it's this feeling of helplessness right because the spacecraft's on its own and everything we you know we could do we did a day ago and so I think you just always have that nervousness but you know we have confidence in the team we have confidence in the engineers and scientists that they did everything that they could do and and you have to put it in their hands and it's our eighth successful landing so we learn from this we learn a little more we do it better the next time pretty much absolutely and you know we had we have had one failure we've learned from the failures too so in fact it when we learned from all the failures from all the missions even if they're not JPL missions or NASA missions each one of them tells you a little something an extra test you should do an extra thing you should guard against you know when the Mars atmosphere or on touchdown and so we've learned from all of these and luckily we've been we've recently been very successful and we're always trying something new we're always trying to learn something new we had a situation this time Odyssey couldn't be in place to give us vent pipe communications and so Marko came about the Marco is just an incredible success story you know exactly as you said we couldn't have Mars Odyssey do the real-time bent pipe for the EDL events we would had to wait a couple hours and and and have the replay from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter so we embarked on this kind of crazy idea to build these two little cube sets and you know cube sets are something that high school kids can build these days but they go up and they go around the earth they go around the earth these are the first interplanetary cube SATs first time we've ever seen cube sets outside the Earth's orbit and their sole purpose was to do the relay so they have this very cool expand planar flat antenna there and they relayed the the UHF signals in real time for us and it was just amazing it's built by a lot of early career folks here at JPL with a little bit of adult supervision but know the engineers did a fantastic job and Marco had exceeded all of our wildest expectations they worked perfectly we built two because we thought maybe one will get there they both got there they both worked it's just a great tribute to the whole the Marco team you saw them in there they had their special black shirts just a fantastic thing and not only did it work for this mission but I think it opens up the door for more small missions like that we could actually put cameras on them and put other instruments on them they're much less expensive so there's I think a whole new whole new door we just opened the door to a new class of planetary science thanks to the Marco's and so I just made with off-the-shelf parts so yeah you know some combination of off-the-shelf parts and some new stuff that we did we had to build a special radio of course because has to talk to the Deep Space Network the antennas are a little bit new technology but a lot of the stuff is pretty pretty standard stuff that that you could replicate at much lower cost in terms of the future that other missions will be carrying their own relays and not having to depend on a bent pipe from a they might carry relays they might actually carry scientific instrumentation you know they can do more than just do relay they can actually take pictures you know they could they could do spectrometry they can do lots of other stuff that we that we would like to do with orbiters and so there's a chance we could send them to Venus we could send them to asteroids we could send them to Mars I mean there's lots of stuff we can do and I think we're just learning the capability of what we can miniaturize and what we can put on these cube sets but this is a great you know a great first first effort well we have one question for you it's a social media question from George K aged 9 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 that inside itself typically our missions take from the time we start the mission to the time we launch it it's about four to five years in the case of insight to two things happen one to our advantage and one not to our advantage the first is we had a lot of heritage from a mission called the Phoenix so a lot of the design work had already been done because it was done for this mission Phoenix even before that for Mars Polar Lander so a lot of the basic design we kind of inherited for this mission on the other hand we had a little bit of bad luck in that the end the seismometer is so unbelievably precise is so incredibly accurate and hard to build that we couldn't quite get it ready so we're doing that in partnership with the French and a lot of other countries in Europe including the UK and Switzerland and and and and other folks we couldn't quite get that ready to go for launch so we had to actually wait two years and took an extra two years then because of that so Mars and the earth are only lined up to launch about every 26 months so we had to wait another 26 months so that took us a little bit longer well speaking of the internationals that's a perfect segue for where we're going next throughout this program we've been trying to introduce you to the people behind the scenes and for the insight mission it requires that we go beyond our borders this is truly an international mission let me introduce you to Dominical gr Dini a Swiss Italian scientists who studies earthquakes and marsquakes some of us have been in this mission for 20 years it's a lifetime project and the many cultures beaming I'm an Italian living in Switzerland I work on earthquakes and therefore I would work on aspects I am a professor in university seismic risk a seismic hazard of my main field of applications inside is a mission which is geared to measure the physical parameters that help us to characterize in theory there are two main reason why it's important to do by International Cooperation there is a big motivation coming from all the different parts to complete it and the community grows much faster than the knowledge grows much faster the Swiss role in this mission to deliver the electronics for the seismometer and we will provide daily routine analysis and check if there are seismic events or maturity impact in the planet itself this is what our students do work out how the planet developed and what is the future and that is a direct relevance of how we understand about the earth it's so interesting and that partnership goes far beyond individual scientists take a look at this it is a picture of the calibration tool on the deck of the insight Lander it's what the team uses to calibrate the cameras on Mars and notice the flags and logos it's recognition of our international partnerships with the French German a French government Space Agency connects and also the German Aerospace Center DLR and it is my pleasure to welcome sice project manager for Leela day from kanessa an executive board member Hans your detox from DLR so I I can't imagine a better day I am very enthusiastic I'm very grateful for all the people of the mission and also my foot my foot are going to the team the testament of the science team to Bruce Banner Philip you on your knee now we have mayor Williams picture of the ground and now the work to deploy so seismometer is beginning so a new adventure in the best conditions thank you for that definitely a new adventure hunter work what's your feeling the HP cubed is on that deck it will be ready to go let's know it's not a job now but first of all I'd like to congratulate our partners here in the US and it was a great day and a great job they did it's not easy to land on Morris that's what we know and it's between for me as well because the first time that we land on Mars with an instrument at least at least as I has experiences and so it's it's a great day and it was really exciting so far now the job starts for us what's funny the leap you had once said you're a musician as well you're he plays jazz you see exploration and music very similar because the human management of all that activity is exactly the same the technique it's different you have a seismometer on you have an orchestra but the world thing to find the best talents on things like that are exactly the same amount to deliver on time to be ready on to all the best performances everything is similar and we should let people know that we won't be able to be collecting science right away is that correct yes we will be collecting science what several months from now we are beginning 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 make the best science will be about the beginning of March no it's it's it's the time yeah but it was a great job so far so from our team and our teams all the teams and as you said it needs a lot of people to bring it up to to Mars and make it successful mission well I have to say congratulations thank you thanks for joining us well here's another profile now meet Ravi Prakash it's his job to keep insight healthy on Mars we could to explore the universe and see things that no one has ever 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's going to go to Mars and try to understand how rocky planets have formed a screenhouse column living a healthy insight spacecraft is healthy batteries we have heaters all over our spacecraft that keep our spacecraft warm enough so that it operates the way it should we look at these things as well as many other parts of our spacecraft on a daily basis to make sure we have a successful mission there are thousands of people working on insight so the systems engineers responsible for understanding how changing one part of the spacecraft ripples through the entire system and how that affects all the other parts of the spacecraft I actually worked at JPL for eight years and then left for about three years to look for a non-profit where I've used my engineering design skills that I learned at NASA to help people in poverty I realized that the stuff we do here impacts billions of people around the world every single person whether they realize or not has been impacted by NASA technology we are the next generation of explorers all right let's meet Ravi Prakash in person Ravi is in our sandbox at the JPL in-situ instrumental laboratory and wait a minute where did that beard come from Highgate yeah you know they were there about 10 of us that decided on the day we launched to Mars that we were going to show and not shape again for seven months until we landed on Mars so I am extra excited that we landed not only because we have a mission on the surface of Mars but I have two little girls at home that love to pull my beard and so I can finally put them into that alright so probably help us out what happens next now clearly in sight is not out of the woods just yet correct you're right so we have some very important steps ahead of us the first is that we have to deploy our solar arrays this is what the spacecraft is doing right now it's deploying these two solar arrays so that we get energy from the Sun this is one of the most important things that we have to do right now after that we're gonna do a series of checkouts on our spacecraft to make sure that everything survived this harrowing entry descent and landing onto Mars and then once that's complete after the next few days will start hard to play our instruments onto the surface of Mars so what exactly is involved with the instrument deployment so this is the first time we're using a robotic arm to put 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 sounds like a really long time but this is because you know we have to be very careful and make sure everything happens just the way it needs to unlike earth we can't send a technician if something goes wrong and so we just want to get it right the first time all right and we in our interview just heard that we may be looking at not until March before we get science that's right we get some amount of science immediately as far as the environment of Mars and get wind data temperature data like magnetometer data but then once we start getting seismic data that will be in the March timeframe all right and can you explain to me Ravi the Issel the the test fit that you're at what do you do there so this is a Martian sandbox for the past two years we've had a great team that's been testing deploying our instruments on a variety of different slopes and rocks now that we actually are on Mars we're gonna transform this area to look exactly like the place we landed and test out deploying our instruments one more time before we do it on the real thing all right thanks Ravi congratulations thanks so much now that insight is on Mars it needs some changes inside is no longer cruising to Mars so the team longer needs the crews mission support area in a little while the team will hand over operations to a new group sitting in 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 be operating insight from here on so the handover is the final step and that will take place at about one o'clock hour time that's about a half hour away for us it's time to say goodbye our congratulations to the inside team and special thanks to our ETL system engineers Christine Saleh and Julie Ward's Chen standby for a news briefing on NASA TV at 2:00 p.m. Pacific 5:00 p.m. Eastern and for those of you who want the latest information on insight and Mars go to Mars nasa.gov splash insight and nasa.gov slash Mars and thank you all who shared pictures on social media it was wonderful to share this historic event with you we have some pictures for you that will leave you with enjoy and congratulations in sight you you