NASA suspends March launch of InSight mission to Mars

A leaking instrument has led NASA to suspend its next planned mission to Mars that was set to launch March 2016.

The Red Planet and Earth align favorably only once in every 26 months, due to which now, NASA’s InSight Mars lander has to wait until mid-2018 to start its mission to characterize interior of Mars in unmatched detail, in case the spacecraft gets off the ground at all. The seismometer provided by France’s Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales required a vacuum seal around at its three main sensors to withstand the harsh conditions on the mars.

“We’re close enough to launch but unfortunately we don’t have enough time to try to identify the leak, fix it and recover and still make it to the launch pad in March”, said John Grunsfeld, NASA’s science mission chief. A question for Dr. Bruce Banerdt, principal investigator at the Mars InSight mission.

Even if the leak is fixed in a few months, InSight can’t be launched anytime soon.

NASA’s next mission to Mars will be delayed at least two more years, if not indefinitely.

The spacecraft, built by Lockheed Martin, was delivered to Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, on December 16.

It is feared the mission could now face a two-year delay. “The idea of growing food for human colonies in space could be a reality very soon”, added Chris McKay, planetary scientist of the NASA Ames research centre. Orion’s Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2), which is expected to be launched by 2023, will be the first Orion flight to have astronauts. Detailed knowledge of the interior of Mars in comparison to Earth will help scientists understand better how terrestrial planets form and evolve, as well better prepare for the day astronauts are sent to live on the Red Planet.

InSight’s Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) is seen being tested in the CNES facilities outside of Paris.

It was also created to measure how much heat is being released from the planet’s subsurface and monitor Mars’s wobble – or variations in its orbit – as it circles the sun. SEIS has been provided by the French space agency CNES.

NASA will hold a media teleconference at 3:30 p.m. EST today to provide details on the agency’s decision.