(dramatic instrumental)
It's been called NASAs seven minutes of terror.
The agonizing moment when decades
of research and engineering,
not to mention hundreds of millions of dollars
will be put to the test as a spacecraft
burns through the martian atmosphere,
plummeting at thousands of miles per hour
to gently land on the hard and unforgiving martian surface.
Although we've done it before,
landing on Mars is hard, and this mission is no different.
(dramatic instrumental music)
The world will watch with baited breath,
as eight years worth of planning
all comes down to these seven minutes,
where those involved with the mission
can only sit, watch, and hope that their creation survives.
(engine rumbling)
NASAs InSight, the first outer space robotic explorer
to study the interior of Mars.
Launched on a foggy morning, on May 5, 2018,
NASAs newest martian explorer, the InSight lander
is currently rocketing towards the red planet.
At speeds of over 6,000 miles per hour,
fast enough to cross the continental United States
in less than 30 minutes.
(intense orchestral music)
Its mission?
To give Mar's it's first ever internal check-up.
The basic idea of InSight is to map out
the deep, structure of Mars for the very first time.
We're gonna map out the thickness of the crust,
the size of the core, sorta get the first map
of the inside of Mars.
And on November 26, at precisely 12 o'clock Pacific time,
if the InSight lander survives the fiery descent,
it'll reach it's final destination.
An 81 mile-long, 17 mile-wide plane,
known as Elysium Planitia.
We wanted a very boring site with not too many rocks,
that way we could land safely, and also have a place
where we could deploy the instruments,
so that they wouldn't be rocks in the way
of where we wanted to put the instrument.
So we'll be landing in Elysium Planitia,
it's about four degrees north of the equator of Mars.
We have to be near the equator because we're solar powered,
and we want to be able to last through the martian winter,
so we need to be able to make sure we get enough sun
during the wintertime.
(gentle piano music)
A location with extended sunlight
will prove key to the success
of the craft's two year undertaking.
But perhaps the most important in choosing a landing site
was minimizing the dangers to the spacecraft,
and its 825 million dollar mission.
There's a lot of constraints we had to deal with.
One of them was that we had to have enough atmosphere
above us to allow us to slow down for landing,
so that we had a good site that was far enough down
and not too high in elevation.
The atmosphere of Mars is actually very, very thin.
So you actually have to take it into account,
so that you slow down as you enter the atmosphere,
or otherwise you could burn up.
So we also have to use not only a heat shield,
but a parachute and rockets to land on Mars gently.
Landing on Mars is one of the most difficult
and precise maneuvers in space exploration.
The process known as entering, descent, and landing
will have the InSight team at the edge of their seats
as they helplessly wait to hear a faint signal
telling them the spacecraft survived the harrowing
six minutes and 45 seconds it'll take to reach martian soil.
(building orchestral music)
It takes thousands of steps to go from
the top of the atmosphere to the surface.
And each one of them has to work perfectly
to be a successful mission.
And on Monday, November 26 at 12 p.m. Pacific time,
we'll learn whether or not
InSight survives it's plunge into Mars.
Just seven minutes before arriving to the top
of the Mars atmosphere, is to separate the cruise stage.
Before you hit the top the atmosphere though,
the space capsule has to orient itself
so that the heat shield is precisely facing the atmosphere.
Now the fun begins.
The vehicle is moving at nearly 13 thousand miles an hour,
but it's hitting the top of the atmosphere
at a very shallow angle: 12 degrees.
Any steeper, the vehicle will hit the thicker part
of the atmosphere and will melt and burn up.
Any shallower, the vehicle will bounce off
the atmosphere of Mars.
At the very top of the atmosphere,
gets about 70 miles above the surface of Mars,
and the air is starting to get thicker
and thicker and thicker.
As it does that, the temperature on that heat shield
gets well over 1,000 degrees Centigrade,
enough to melt steel.
Over the next two minutes, the vehicle decelerates
from 13,000 miles an hour to about 1,000 miles an hour.
At about 10 miles above the surface of Mars,
a supersonic parachute is launched
out of the back of the vehicle.
Six pyrotechnic devices fire simultaneously,
allowing the heat shield to fall
and tumble away from the vehicle,
exposing the lander to the surface of Mars.
10 seconds after the heat shield is dropped,
three pyro technically deployed legs
are released and locked for landing.
About a minute later, the landing radar is turned on
sending pulses towards the surface of mars.
As the vehicle starts to try to measure
how high it is above the surface
and how fast it's going,
at about a mile above the surface of Mars,
the lander falls away from the back shell
and lights its entrance and very quickly,
the vehicle must rotate out of the way
so that the parachute and the back shell
doesn't come down to hit it.
The last thing that has to happen,
is that on the moment of contact,
the engines have to shut down immediately,
if they don't, the vehicle will tip over.
(orchestral music)
If everything goes exactly according to plan,
InSight will signal its successful landing
to anxious humans back at JPL
with a little bit of help from some nearby friends.
There were two stowaways joining InSight
on its trip to our neighboring planet,
known as the Mars Cube One, or MarCO,
these briefcase sized satellites
will act as a communications relay
between our planet and Mars.
(intense orchestral music)
They'll beam data from InSight back to the control room
where team members will have to wait
an agonizing eight additional minutes
for the signal to arrive back to Earth.
So we have two types of antennas on the InSight Lander
that are used for communication.
So, this one is an X-band antenna,
there are two X-band antennas.
These antennas communicate direct to Earth
and receives the commands daily.
After its solar arrays are deployed to power the craft,
InSight will take pictures of the landing site
so that engineers and scientists back home
can formulate a detailed plan of attack.
So there is one camera that's mounted underneath the deck,
its got a fisheye view
and gets area right where I'm standing
in front of the workspace.
The second camera is mounted on the forearm
of the robotic arm and that sees anywhere we place the arm.
The camera will also take three-dimensional stereo images
of the workspace allowing scientists
and engineers to select the best place
to deploy the instruments.
That data will then be used
with an augmented reality headset
that will provide holographic imagery
to help accurately imitate the landing site.
Seen here in red, the data from Mars
is superimposed on the labs gravel sandbox
and will then be shaped to resemble the area,
helping the team find the best suitable location
to employ the instrument.
It will take InSight and the team on the ground
two to three months to deploy the instruments on Mars
after InSight lands.
And while three months may seem like an awfully long time,
in space exploration, patience is a virtue.
Besides, it'll give the team back home
plenty of time to catch their breath
after InSights terrifying seven minute free fall.
(light instrumental music)