The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, recently announced that it is reviving its Mars robotic mission which the agency failed to launch this month. NASA is planning to launch the troubled Mars lander called InSight in May 2018.
The main objective of the InSight land is to investigate the interior structure of the Red planet. Top NASA officials announced on March 9 that they picked May 2018 as the launch date since during that time of the year, Mars and Earth will be aligned favorably for interplanetary missions to take place. Mission experts reveal that this kind of interplanetary alignment only occurs once every 26 months.
In a statement acquired by Space, NASA science mission directorate associate administrator John Grunsfeld said, "The science goals of InSight are compelling, and NASA and CNES plans to overcome the technical challenges are sound. The quest to understand the interior of Mars has been a long-standing goal of planetary scientists for decades. We're excited to be back on the path for a launch, now in 2018."
According to Nature, NASA had been considering to completely scrap the Mars mission when a leak in the vacuum chamber protecting a key instrument appeared to be too much damaged to be repaired in time for the planned March 2016 launch. Despite overwhelming odds, NASA decided to press on with the mission and instead reschedule it for a May 2018 launch.
In the event that everything goes to plan during the rescheduled May 5, 2018 launch, InSight should be able to reach the surface of Mars on Nov. 26 of the same year.
Once in Mars, InSight or Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations will use two main science instruments in order to gather more data and study the interior structure of Mars. Scientist working on the project are expecting that the lander will gather enough resources in order for them to fully study the structure and formation of the rocky planet.
The InSight Mars mission has a budget of $675 million and NASA claims that it had already spent $525 million of it. The scheduled two-year delay will end up costing NASA more in order to maintain and keep the InSight lander in perfect condition.