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Anxiety abounds at NASA as Mars landing day arrives

Published

6 years ago

7 minute read

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A NASA spacecraft’s six-month journey to Mars neared its dramatic grand finale Monday in what scientists and engineers hoped would be a soft precision landing on flat red plains.

The InSight lander aimed for an afternoon touchdown, as anxiety built among those involved in the $1 billion international effort.

InSight’s perilous descent through the Martian atmosphere, after a trip of 300 million miles (482 million kilometres), had stomachs churning and nerves stretched to the max. Although an old pro at this, NASA last attempted a landing at Mars six years ago.

The robotic geologist — designed to explore Mars’ mysterious insides — must go from 12,300 mph (19,800 kph) to zero in six minutes flat as it pierces the Martian atmosphere, pops out a parachute, fires its descent engines and, hopefully, lands on three legs.

“Landing on Mars is one of the hardest single jobs that people have to do in planetary exploration,” noted InSight’s lead scientist, Bruce Banerdt. “It’s such a difficult thing, it’s such a dangerous thing that there’s always a fairly uncomfortably large chance that something could go wrong.”

Earth’s success rate at Mars is 40 per cent, counting every attempted flyby, orbital flight and landing by the U.S., Russia and other countries dating all the way back to 1960.

But the U.S. has pulled off seven successful Mars landings in the past four decades. With only one failed touchdown, it’s an enviable record. No other country has managed to set and operate a spacecraft on the dusty red surface.

InSight could hand NASA its eighth win.

It’s shooting for Elysium Planitia, a plain near the Martian equator that the InSight team hopes is as flat as a parking lot in Kansas with few, if any, rocks. This is no rock-collecting expedition. Instead, the stationary 800-pound (360-kilogram) lander will use its 6-foot (1.8-meter) robotic arm to place a mechanical mole and seismometer on the ground.

The self-hammering mole will burrow 16 feet (5 metres) down to measure the planet’s internal heat, while the ultra-high-tech seismometer listens for possible marsquakes. Nothing like this has been attempted before at our smaller next-door neighbour, nearly 100 million miles (160 million kilometres) away.

No experiments have ever been moved robotically from the spacecraft to the actual Martian surface. No lander has dug deeper than several inches, and no seismometer has ever worked on Mars.

By examining the deepest, darkest interior of Mars — still preserved from its earliest days — scientists hope to create 3D images that could reveal how our solar system’s rocky planets formed 4.5 billion years ago and why they turned out so different. One of the big questions is what made Earth so hospitable to life.

Mars once had flowing rivers and lakes; the deltas and lakebeds are now dry, and the planet cold. Venus is a furnace because of its thick, heat-trapping atmosphere. Mercury, closest to the sun, has a surface that’s positively baked.

The planetary know-how gained from InSight’s two-year operation could even spill over to rocky worlds beyond our solar system, according to Banerdt. The findings on Mars could help explain the type of conditions at these so-called exoplanets “and how they fit into the story that we’re trying to figure out for how planets form,” he said.

Concentrating on planetary building blocks, InSight has no life-detecting capability. That will be left for future rovers. NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, for instance, will collect rocks for eventual return that could hold evidence of ancient life.

Because it’s been so long since NASA’s last Martian landfall — the Curiosity rover in 2012 — Mars mania is gripping not only the space and science communities, but everyday folks.

Viewing parties are planned coast to coast at museums, planetariums and libraries, as well as in France, where InSight’s seismometer was designed and built. The giant NASDAQ screen in New York’s Times Square will start broadcasting NASA Television an hour before InSight’s scheduled 3 p.m. EST touchdown; so will the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The InSight spacecraft was built near Denver by Lockheed Martin.

But the real action, at least on Earth, will unfold at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, home to InSight’s flight control team. NASA is providing a special 360-degree online broadcast from inside the control centre.

Confirmation of touchdown could take minutes — or hours. At the minimum, there’s an eight-minute communication lag between Mars and Earth.

A pair of briefcase-size satellites trailing InSight since liftoff in May will try to relay its radio signals to Earth, with a potential lag time of under nine minutes. These experimental CubeSats will fly right past the red planet without stopping. Signals also could travel straight from InSight to radio telescopes in West Virginia and Germany. It will take longer to hear from NASA’s Mars orbiters.

Project manager Tom Hoffman said Sunday he’s trying his best to stay outwardly calm as the hours tick down. Once InSight phones home from the Martian surface, though, he expects to behave much like his three young grandsons did at Thanksgiving dinner, running around like crazy and screaming.

“Just to warn anybody who’s sitting near me … I’m going to unleash my inner 4-year-old on you, so be careful,” he said.

___

For AP’s complete coverage of the Mars landing: https://apnews.com/MarsLanding

___

The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Marcia Dunn, The Associated Press


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Border Patrol Agent Lashes Out At Biden-Harris Admin, Calling Job ‘Migrant Concierge Service’ Amid Border Crisis

Published on September 14, 2024

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Mariane Angela

The border agent stated he is prepared to risk his career to bring attention to what he views as grave mismanagement and potential dangers posed by current border policies.

A Border Patrol agent criticized the recent changes in his role under the Biden-Harris administration, condemning it as transforming into a “migrant concierge service,” according to The New York Post Friday.

Zachary Apotheker, who joined the force in 2020, voiced his frustration over the shift in his duties under the Biden administration from intercepting drug traffickers and apprehending illegal entrants to what he now sees as aiding migrant entry, in an interview with the NYP. Apotheker highlighted concerns about security and vetting under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, noting that over 8 million migrants have crossed the southern border since January 2021, including members of the Venezuelan prison gang, Tren de Aragua.

“I don’t want to bring people into the country. That’s not what I signed up to do,” Apotheker told NYP. Apotheker’s distress is further compounded by over 1.7 million illegal migrants who have evaded capture since Jan. 2021, as he shared encounters with victims of migrant-committed crimes, naming individuals and emphasizing the personal toll on him.

“I’m an apolitical person and I just want to do my job and protect this country,” the agent said, the NYP reported. “When I see people from another country coming here, getting resources beyond what the American citizen can get, that’s where I have to draw the line. And then they’re going out and committing crimes and we’re still not removing them and American citizens are being killed, women are being raped.”

Apotheker and multiple Border Patrol sources have raised concerns to the NYP about the inadequate documentation for unaccompanied migrant children under 14, including missing biometric data, complicating their safe relocation to families or sponsors in the U.S. He highlighted a backlog in the immigration system, noting that 291,000 migrant children have been released in the U.S. without court dates, with an additional 32,000 failing to appear for their scheduled hearings.

The border agent stated he is prepared to risk his career to bring attention to what he views as grave mismanagement and potential dangers posed by current border policies. “However bad you think it is now, it’s only going to be worse,” he warned.

The White House and Border Patrol did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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Rumored deal with Bloc Quebec party could keep Trudeau Liberals in power, stave off election

Published on September 10, 2024

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

“The federal government does not have a mandate to bargain with Quebec separatists at the expense of Alberta, the West and the rest of the country”

The possibility of an early Canadian election may not come to fruition after Bloc Québécois leader Yves-Francois Blanchet hinted that an alliance between the separatist party and the Liberals under Justin Trudeau could become a reality.

Rumors began to swirl that a Bloc-Liberal deal could happen after Bloc House leader Alain Therrien said Sunday that the party’s “objectives remain the same, but the means to get there will be much easier.”

“We will negotiate and seek gains for Quebec … our balance of power has improved, that’s for sure,” he said, as reported by the Canadian Press.

Therrien made the comments in light of the possibility of a federal election taking place before fall 2025 after New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh pulled his official support for Trudeau’s Liberals last week.

Late last month, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre called on Singh to pull his support for Trudeau’s Liberals so that an election could be held.

Therrien also noted that the NDP pulling its support of the Trudeau Liberals has created a “window of opportunity” that his party may exploit. The Canadian Press reported that a person close to the Bloc party said directly that the NDP had in essence handed the party the balance of power.

As it stands now, the Bloc has 32 seats to the NDP’s 24, which is more than enough to prop up the Liberals, who have 154 seats.

As for Blanchet, he told the media on Monday that he was feeling “good” about his party’s newfound power. He then took a shot at Poilievre, saying he is more or less like Trudeau. “There are plenty of issues on which (Poilievre’s) in the same position as Justin Trudeau,” Blanchet said.

“Show us that you’re different, Justin Trudeau, apart from being against abortion, then we’ll see what you have to offer,” he said.

While most Conservative MPs are pro-life, Poilievre supports abortion and has a poor track record when it comes to life and family issues, with Campaign Life Coalition having given him a “red light” rating.

News of a possible Bloc-Liberal deal to keep Trudeau in power drew the immediate ire of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.

“The federal government does not have a mandate to bargain with Quebec separatists at the expense of Alberta, the West and the rest of the country,” she wrote Monday on X. “If the Liberals go down this path, we need an election to be called immediately.”

On Tuesday, Blanchet responded to Smith’s comments to reporters by saying he found her remarks “funny,” adding that “Canadians are suddenly very interested in us.”

As for Trudeau, his woes continue to mount. LifeSiteNews recently reported how national elections campaign director for Canada’s federal Liberal Party announced he was stepping down because, according to sources close to the party, he does not think Trudeau can win a fourth consecutive election.

Recent polls show that the Conservatives under Poilievre would win a majority government in a landslide in an election held today. Singh’s NDP and Trudeau’s Liberals would lose a massive number of seats.

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