Elysium Planitia, a site selected by NASA's InSight mission to Mars on November 26, is so wide that it may look like a stadium car park, said the US Space Agency.
"Yes Elysium Planitia was a salad, consisting of Roman lettuce and cabbage leaves without sauce, "InSight Chief Investigator Bruce Banerdt told NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
"If it were ice cream, it would be vanilla."
But this is the way that internal research using seismic exploration, geodesy and heat technology (InSight) projects like it.
"The previous missions at Red Planet have explored their surface, exploring its canyons, volcanoes, stones and soil," Banerdt said.
"But the signatures of the planet's formation processes can only be found by perceiving and exploring evidence that is buried beneath the surface. InSight's mission is to explore the deep interior of Mars, taking on the signs of the planet's life – its impulse, temperature and reflexes," Banerdt added.
Considering these essential features, the InSight team will help you look back at the time when the rocky planets of the solar system formed. The investigation will depend on three tools:
The six-sensory seismometer, called the Seismic Experiments on the Interior Structure (SEIS), will record seismic waves traveling along the inner structure of the planet. When studying seismic waves, scientists know what might spell.
On Mars, scientists think that perpetrators can be Marc scratches or meteorites on the surface.
The mission "Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package" will be deeper than any other spatula, drill or probes on Mars before assessing how much heat flows from the planet. Its observations will reveal whether Earth and Mars are made from the same material.
Finally, the InSight "Rise and Interior Design Experiment" (RISE) will use land-based devices to measure the vibration of Mars's rotation axis, providing information about the planet's core.
In order for InSight to do this, the team needed a landing site that checked several boxes, as the three-leg landing platform – non-rover – InSight would remain where it was touching.
"For the first time, the Mars landing site had to re-think underneath the Mars surface," said Thomas Hoffman, Project Manager at InPage JPL.
"We needed not only a safe place for land, but also a work space that through a 16-meter (five-meter) heat-flow probe of our pipelines," Hoffman added.
The site should be bright enough and warm enough to feed solar cells, while keeping the electronics within the temperature range throughout the March of the year (26 Earth months).
So the team focused on the equatorial bar, where the land manager's solar panels would have enough solar radiation to allow all systems to run throughout the year.
NASA InSight mission after 20.05. The annual tour, which began on May 5, will take place on November 26th.
Its solar panels will appear within a few hours of touch.
Mission engineers and scientists will take their time evaluating their "jobs" before deploying SEIS and a package of heat and physical properties on the surface – about three months after landing – and start science seriously, NASA said.
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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is automatically generated from syndicated feeds.)
