NASA suspends 2016 launch of Mars lander

The Mars rover InSight will not launch as scheduled in March. Built by France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales, this is a seismometer that is able to detect ground movements on an atomic scale thanks to three main sensors sealed in a vacuum. “We were very close to succeeding, but an anomaly has occurred, which requires further investigation”. The agency will review potential solutions to the instrumental problem, as well as run the costs of potentially delaying the mission for two years. A leak in the instrument appears unable to be fixed by the craft’s planned launch window from March 4 to March 30, 2016. SEIS, supplied by the French space agency CNES, would have been placed on the surface of Mars, where it would have listened for faint rumblings through the planet’s crust: marsquakes.

This August 2015 artist’s rendering provided by NASA/JPL-Caltech depicts the InSight Mars lander studying the interior of Mars.

The problem started with one of the most intriguing new instruments on InSight, the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure, and the difficulty of keeping it airtight. “The whole project team has been giving it everything they’ve got for many months to try to make this launch opportunity, so we are understandably disappointed”.

“That’s all forward work”, John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said during a teleconference today (Dec. 22), referring to the determination of InSight’s ultimate fate. The launch delay will automatically trigger an assessment of whether the mission should fly at all.

The French space agency CNES, which provided the seismometer, attempted to fix a leak in the instrument’s vacuum canister, but apparently was unsuccessful.

On a Mars mission, InSight will go beneath the Mars surface and measure the planet’s seismology, heat-flow probe, and learn about its reflexes by precision tracking.

“The decision was made by the leak”, Grunsfeld said.

Up until Monday, managers had high hopes they could fix all the leaks in time for next March’s liftoff atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. If you’re eager to see what the future holds, the Mission: Mars exhibition at the Saint Louis Science Center (5050 Oakland Avenue; 314-289-4400 or www.slsc.org) is the place to be. Bruce Banerdt, a geologist who has spent his life studying the evolution of Mars and who is the mission’s principal investigator, said he has been waiting a long time to answer these questions.