source: L e Figaro 19/11/2018
author: Tristan Vey
translation: doxa-louise
The INSIGHT Franco-American mission to land
on Mars next Monday
VIDEO - Next Monday, the probe Insight will be making a perilous
atmospheric entry at more than 20,000 km/hr before landing
gently, if all goes well, at around 20hrs. It has been more than
six years since anyone has tried to go down on the the planet.
The hour of truth is fast approaching. One week from today (Monday), the
Franco-American mission Insight will attempt a difficult landing on Mars a bit
short of seven months after take-off. The probe weighing by that time some 600 kg
will enter the atmosphere at over 20,000 km/h. There will only be six minutes
to accomplish the deceleration. A thermal shield is meant to offer protection from
atmospheric friction, before a large parachute is deployed. Then 12 small retrorockets
should ensure the final soft landing, expected at Monday November 26 20 hrs,
French time.
This will be the first time, since the appearance of the Curiosity Rover on the planet
in 2012, that Nasa attempts a landing. For its part, Europe failed in its 2016
trial. The Schiaparelli demonstrator that accompanied the TGO(Trace Gas Orbiter)
probe crashed on the surface, victim to a technical problem.
Making it to Mars orbit, a fortiori landing at the surface, is no child’s play. The red
planet has become, with time, a cemetery for space ambitions. Neither Russia nor Europe
have ever succeeded at landing a probe that could function in a durable fashion.
The little English lander Beagle 2 for example never managed to deploy its solar
panels although the landing probably succeeded. As for the Soviet Mars 3, it
functioned for a few seconds at its arrival in 1971, sending back images on which
one might see, aided by faith, a splotch of Martian surface.
America has known its own hard times, with the notable loss of Mars Polar Lander
in 1999, plunging to the surface at great speed having interrupted too early the
deceleration procedure. But it is also Nasa that holds a proud record of the only
successful landings on Mars: seven to date. Insight will be trying next Monday to
join this select club.
The little lander will then need to deploy on the surface the seismometer built
under the aegis of CNES, the French space agency, and which constitutes the heart
of the mission. Aim: to detect possible Mars earthquakes and thus deduce the internal
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