NASA Approves Mars InSight Lander Launch for 2018 at Additional $180 Million Cost

NASA announced Sept. 2 that it has approved plans to launch a delayed Mars lander mission in 2018, although at an additional cost that could affect plans for later planetary missions.

The InSight Mars lander, originally scheduled for launch in March, will now launch no earlier than May 5, 2018, after NASA’s Science Mission Directorate formally approved the revised mission plan this week. That launch will allow a landing on Mars in November 2018.

NASA postponed the launch in December 2015 after a series of problems with one of its primary instruments, the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), provided by the French space agency CNES. The instrument suffered a series of vacuum leaks that NASA concluded could not be fixed in time to permit a launch during a window that lasted about a month.

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NASA Commits to Launching InSight to mars in 2018

A Mars mission that had to cancel plans to launch this month because of an instrument problem will instead fly in 2018, although the additional cost to NASA will not be known for several months.

NASA announced March 9 that the launch of the InSight Mars lander has been rescheduled for May 2018, the next available launch window. A launch then would set up a landing on Mars in November 2018.

InSight was scheduled to launch this month on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. However, in December NASA cancelled the launch after concluding that a seismometer, one of the spacecraft’s key instruments, would not be ready in time after experiencing a series of leaks in its vacuum-sealed components.

NASA has accepted a plan to redesign the faulty instrument, called the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure and provided by the French space agency CNES. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory will design, build and test a new vacuum enclosure for the instrument, while CNES will be responsible for instrument level integration and testing.

The NASA announcement did not disclose the cost of the two-year delay, noting that a final value won’t be known until August, after NASA makes arrangements for the rescheduled launch with ULA. At a March 2 meeting of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group, Bruce Banerdt, principal investigator for InSight, estimated the cost to be “on the order” of $150 million.

In an interview during the Goddard Memorial Symposium here March 9, John Grunsfeld, NASA associate administrator for science, suggested that good performance on other missions could provide financial reserves to diminish the fiscal effects of the delay. “The actual impact is probably less than half of that $140–150 million,” he said.

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NASA's Mars InSight Lander Postponed to 2018

NASA will hold a press call Tuesday afternoon (Dec. 22) to discuss its decision to suspend a March launch campaign for the Mars InSight lander, which was shipped to its launch site this month despite a problem with one of its instruments.

The holdup with the instrument, the French-built Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), means InSight will miss its Mars launch window and be stuck on the ground for about another two years, NASA said in a press release that hit the wire Tuesday afternoon on the heels of a brief heads-up emailed to journalists that morning.

“After thorough examination, NASA managers have decided to suspend the March 2016 launch of the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission,” NASA said in its Tuesday morning notice. “The decision follows unsuccessful attempts to repair an air leak on a key component of the mission’s science payload.”

SEIS, provided by the French Space Agency (CNES), suffered “a leak in the vacuum container carrying its main sensors,” NASA confirmed Dec. 3. The instrument is still in France undergoing repairs at at Paris-based Sodern.

The leak was caused by a defective weld on the instrument’s vacuum tank, CNES President Jean-Yves Le Gall told SpaceNews Dec. 8. At the time, Le Gall said CNES had performed a new weld that should have fixed the problem.

Even as NASA was preparing to brief reporters Dec. 22, Le Gall told SpaceNews that CNES had not given up on fixing the SEIS instrument in time to launch this year.

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Instrument for NASA InSight Mars Lander Will be Repaired in Time for 2016 Launch

The French-built instrument for NASA’s InSight Mars lander scheduled for launch in March is expected to be repaired in time for shipment to the United States in early January after developing a leak in its vacuum container, the president of the French space agency, CNES, said Dec. 8.

Briefing reporters here at the COP21 United Nations Climate Change Conference, Jean-Yves Le Gall said the leak, which compromised the required high-precision vacuum chamber carrying InSight sensors, was caused by a defective weld that is applied to close off the tank.

The leak’s cause has been identified and a new weld performed, Le Gall said. Tests to confirm the new weld’s integrity are underway and, assuming no problems, will be completed in time to ship the instrument to the United States in the first week of January. It will then be integrated into the InSight lander in preparation for the March launch.

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Mars InSight Lander may be Forced to Delay to Next Mars Launch Window

Consideration is being given to delaying the launch of NASA's Mars InSight lander mission. The problem has to do with the French seismometer. There is a persistent leak inside the seismometer that has been hard to fix. Given that this payload is one of the two prime functions of InSight if the issue is not resolved in the next month or so then the launch will be slipped until the next favorable Mars launch window opens.

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