NASA InSight: The Science and Engineering of a Mars Lander

Original Air Date: Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018

PART 1: Engineering Briefing

Prior to landing on the Red Planet NASA discusses the engineering that went into the InSight lander. Launched on May 5, InSight marks NASA's first Mars landing since the Curiosity rover in 2012. The landing will kick off a two-year mission in which InSight will become the first spacecraft to study Mars' deep interior. Its data also will help scientists understand the formation of all rocky worlds, including our own.

InSight is being followed to Mars by two miniature NASA spacecraft, jointly called Mars Cube One (MarCO), the first deep-space mission for CubeSats. If MarCO makes its planned Mars flyby, it will attempt to relay data from InSight as it enters the planet's atmosphere and lands.

InSight and MarCO flight controllers will monitor the spacecraft's entry, descent and landing from Mission Control at JPL.

Speakers include:

- Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator
- Tom Hoffman, InSight project manager at JPL
- Stu Spath, InSight Program Manager, Lockheed Martin Science
- Rob Grover, Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) Phase Lead for InSight, NASA-JPL
- Anne Marinan, MarCO-B Mission Manager, NASA-JPL

PART 2: Science Overview

Speakers include:

Lori Glaze, Acting Director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters
Bruce Banerdt, InSight Principal Investigator, NASA-JPL
Sue Smrekar, InSight Deputy Principal Investigator, NASA-JPL
Philippe Laudet, SEIS (Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure) Project Manager, CNES (French
Space Agency)
Tilman Spohn, HP 3 (Heat Flow and Physical Properties Probe) Principal Investigator, DLR
(German Aerospace Agency)

[CameronGillis]

Thank you JPL team for another excellent session. It seems that this YouTube video has audio and video out of sync so appreciate if you could fix and re-post.. Cheers!

[TiberiusMaximus]

I'd love to see a mission to Jupiter's moons using a full size "mother-ship" with like 20-30 MARCO size cube sat's dropping off a few at each moon with HD camera's and some science sensors. People wanna see amazing pics of these moons especially Io with its volcano's, it gets the public more interested in these missions and hopefully translates into getting NASA a bigger budget.

[ThebestfamiIykeyb]

Really interesting would love to work there some day :)

[MSPUKIMOLIELIE]

Great presentation. Thanks for presenting the info in an understandable fashion.

[Raydensheraj]

Nervous anyone (; it's ok, great presentation and you can tell these guys love what they do.

[jamesmjoyce]

I also find it fascinating that there are so many empty seats in the audience! This is so much more interesting than anything that ever happens at a White House press briefing, which are always packed.

[LordGryllwotth]

Presentation starts again at 1:06:40 after the break.

[marcatteberry]

Today is March, 20, 2019. Why is it so hard to find any info on the lander and what it is doing?

[FPVREVIEWS]

JPL is so under-funded it's not funny. Wish Washington would wake up and realize where value in the economy comes from, and how important it is to do exploration, and research.

[chrisfloyd]

If the landing rockets weren't going to use all their fuel landing would they be powerful enough to lift off to a second test site?

[Eddie]

They must have had problems with th TCM's. It's much more common to cancel TCM 5 and 6. 6 is for emergencies only and 5 only used if the first four have errors.

[Kaxlon]

Congrats NASA!
Good to see that jazzhands are not used when you guys celebrate. ;)

[mishmash]

For god sake & everything that is holy please COntinue the ANimation! All I ever wanted was Sharks with Lasers.

[MetronomeSenpai]

I fell asleep while watching infographic, and here I am....

[Swede__DJT]

This craft has a "clean my solar panel" option?
Or some other function to protect them from accumulating dust?

[fairysox]

Can this thing work out if Mars is flat ?

[googleskype]

Oh no! They forgot to include the wipers again!

[canadiannuclearman]

Can Nasa give me a job im a mechanical designer. where do i send my resume?

[MSPUKIMOLIELIE]

Compared to Chinese Baits, what things does NASA do differentsnd how is this better than what China does??

[anvilstryker]

..100 million miles (from earth to mars) in 4380 hours (6 months) = 22, 831 mph?