NASA calls off next Mars mission; no time to fix leaky seal

NASA on Tuesday said it has canceled the March 2016 launch of a space probe that was created to give scientists a deeper look inside Mars.

NASA’s Mars InSight lander was going to launch in March 2016 and begin studying seismic activity on the Red Planet.

“In 2008, we made a hard, but correct decision to postpone the launch of the Mars Science Laboratory mission for two years to better ensure mission success”, said Jim Green, NASA’s director of Planetary Science Division. “Our teams will find a solution to fix it, but it won t be solved in time for a launch in 2016”.

InSight’s Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) is seen being tested in the CNES facilities outside of Paris. According to NASA, the geophysical instruments onboard InSight would be able to take readings of the planet’s interior to reveal clues about how terrestrial planets form. Essentially, the lander is purpose-built for sniffing out earthquakes (or “marsquakes”), and can measure movement in the ground as small as the width of an atom.

The troubled seismometer detects minute vibrations, features sensors encased in a nine-inch (23cm) wide vacuum sphere, and has been plagued by a series of leaks since August. The instrument, which is being borrowed from the French Space Agency, failed to hold a vacuum during testing Monday in extreme cold temperature, NASA said. “We just haven’t had time to work through that because our focus was on getting ready to launch”. Grunsfeld said it would take about two months to review the ramifications of the delay and the options of what to do next.

But because InSight is a cost-capped mission, the team will have to assess the cost of fixing the lander and maintaining the mission for another two years and seek funding approval.

Preparations are on a tight schedule for launch during the period March 4th through March 30th.

Instead, it’s being sent back to its maker – Lockheed Martin – in Denver, Colorado.

“I am excited to put potatoes on Mars and even more so that we can use a simulated Martian terrain so close to the area where potatoes originated”, he said. “Every opportunity isn’t equal because our orbits are slightly eccentric, and so the 2018 opportunity is actually energetically more favorable”. InSight’s rocket will also carry a pair of CubeSats, for a mission dubbed Mars Cube One, which will assist in relaying signals during InSight’s entry, descent, and landing.

Chris McKay, planetary scientist of the NASA Ames research center said, “The extraordinary efforts of the team have set the bar for extraterrestrial farming”. It is too early to tell what impact this delay will have on InSight’s budget, or on the number of new small-class missions NASA can select in 2016. To date, InSight has already cost $525 million.