NASA calls off Mars mission; not enough time to fix leak

The Mars InSight lander is created to study the interior of Mars.

Officials at the space agency announced Tuesday that its Mars InSight mission will miss its March 2016 launch date, because of stubborn tiny leaks in a vacuum sphere housing its seismic instrument.

During a teleconference on December 22, while referring to the determination of the ultimate fate of InSight, John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said, “That’s all forward work”.

The space agency will not be launching the Insight spacecraft in March because of an air leak in a seismometer, which measures ground movements and requires a vacuum seal to withstand the red planet’s harsh conditions. The instrument, which was provided by France’s CNES space agency, has a leak in the vacuum container that houses its primary sensors.

Perception came a week ago in Florida at Vandenberg Air Force Base to start products in front of a launch.

In 2012 NASA chose InSight over other proposed missions to sail a boat on the seas of Saturn’s moon Titan and to hop across the surface of a comet.

Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, said the mission cost for InSight has been estimated at $675 million. “We just haven’t had time to work through that because our focus was on getting ready to launch”.

NASA managers are now saying that it will take several months to the cause of the leak is ascertained.

InSight’s science payload includes two key instruments: SEIS, provided by CNES, and the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3), provided by the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

It is feared the mission could now face a two-year delay. Missions to Mars typically have fit into a small window where the orbits of both planets are close enough to make the trip economically feasible.

Engineers first discovered the leaks in August. “We’re able to solve it here on Earth before we go”. “I think it’s much better that we have this discussion now, rather than sending it to Mars and wishing we had the opportunity here on Earth to fix something”. Unlike the Mars Curiosity rover, which infamously missed its 2009 launch window and added hundreds of millions of dollars to its cost, InSight’s instrument problems are the responsibility of an global partner.

A circular depression on the surface of Mars is pictured in his image acquired on January 5, 2015 by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), provided by NASA.