On November 26, 2018, the NASA InSight spacecraft successfully landed on Mars. This paper describes the operations that took place on Mars after that landing, focusing on deployment with the SEIS (Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure) seismometer instrument’s robotic arm, followed by the associated wind and thermal shield. This is the first time an instrument has ever been deployed on another planet. The operations led by NASA-JPL lasted several weeks, until February 2019. CNES, the French Space Agency, is leading the operations concerning the SEIS instrument. The SEIS instrument consists of two independent 3-axis seismometers: an ultra-sensitive very broad band (VBB) oblique seismometer, and a miniature, short period (SP) seismometer. These sensors measure movements at the surface of Mars and will enable the planet’s interior structure to be characterized for the first time. The mission will last for two years (one Martian year). This paper is divided into two parts. The first part describes how the CNES team prepared for the SEIS deployment operations on Mars, through a yearlong training course with NASA-JPL and a rigorous certification process. The many lessons learned during this training process will be mentioned here, especially how operational issues encountered during the tests were taken into account to update the operational processes and the ground tools before the real operations began. The second part of the paper describes the real deployment operations on Mars in detail. The SEIS team was responsible for performing a health assessment on SEIS using the telemetry received, preparing SEIS activities while taking available resources and flight constraints into account, and delivering sequences to be run on Mars. The entire team was operating remotely from JPL, far from home for a long period of time. This paper therefore also includes a section on the management of French teams operating from NASA-JPL in California over a three-month period, especially in relation to the human and technical challenges encountered during that critical phase, and how lessons learned from the phase could benefit future missions.
InSight-SEIS Instrument Deployment Operations on Mars
Springer Aerospace Techn.
16.03.2022
31 pages
Aufsatz/Kapitel (Buch)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
InSight-SEIS Instrument Deployment Operations on Mars
TIBKAT | 2022
|InSight-SEIS Instrument Deployment Operations on Mars
TIBKAT | 2022
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