Tag Archives: Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations Geodesy and Heat Transport

InSight: Landing site bland as ‘vanilla ice cream’

No doubt about it, NASA explores some of the most awe-inspiring locations in our solar system and beyond. Once seen, who can forget the majesty of astronaut Jim Irwin standing before the stark beauty of the Moon’s Hadley Apennine mountain … Continue reading

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InSight: Five things to know about its landing

Every Mars landing is a knuckle-whitening feat of engineering. But each attempt has its own quirks based on where a spacecraft is going and what kind of science the mission intends to gather.  On Nov. 26, NASA will try to … Continue reading

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InSight: NASA Launches a new podcast to Mars

NASA has a new mission to Mars, and it’s taking podcast listeners along for the ride. Launching today, the eight-episode series “On a Mission” follows the InSight lander as it travels hundreds of millions of miles and attempts to land … Continue reading

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HiRISE: Possible rock falls on steep slopes

Possible rock falls on steep slopes in Cerberus Fossae. Our goal here is to take “before” images at HiRISE resolution in order to identify fresh rockfalls that might be able to be associated with seismic events or Marsquakes detected by … Continue reading

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InSight: NASA landing briefing, October 31

NASA’s upcoming landing of the first-ever mission to study the heart of Mars will be the topic of a media briefing at 1:30 p.m. EDT (10:30 a.m. PDT) Wednesday, Oct. 31 at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The briefing will air … Continue reading

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InSight: Studying Mars while standing still

You don’t need wheels to explore Mars. After touching down in November, NASA’s InSight spacecraft will spread its solar panels, unfold a robotic arm … and stay put. Unlike the space agency’s rovers, InSight is a lander designed to study … Continue reading

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InSight: Winning the ‘Claw Game’ on Mars

If you’ve ever played the claw machine at an arcade, you know how hard it can be to maneuver the metal “hand” to pick up a prize. Imagine trying to play that game when the claw is on Mars, the … Continue reading

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MarCO makes space for small explorers

Twenty years ago, CubeSats — a class of boxy satellites small enough to fit in a backpack — were used by universities as a teaching aid. Simpler, smaller and cheaper than traditional satellites, they’ve made space more accessible to private … Continue reading

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InSight: Taking Mars’ internal temperature

Ambitious climbers, forget Mt. Everest. Dream about Mars. The Red Planet has some of the tallest mountains in the solar system. They include Olympus Mons, a volcano nearly three times the height of Everest. It borders a region called the … Continue reading

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InSight: Halfway to Mars, instruments check in

NASA’s InSight spacecraft, en route to a Nov. 26 landing on Mars, passed the halfway mark on Aug. 6. All of its instruments have been tested and are working well. As of Aug. 20, the spacecraft had covered 172 million … Continue reading

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