Step by step towards Mars - DLR 'mole' HP3 and its spacecraft transported to their launch site

DLR German Aerospace Center
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Step by step towards Mars - DLR 'mole' HP3 and its spacecraft transported to their launch site


The first 1480 kilometres from Denver to the launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California have been completed – aboard an aircraft. The InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) lander will now have to travel the remaining 485 million kilometres to Mars alone, following its planned launch on 5 May 2018. Its mission is to thoroughly explore the Red Planet. SEIS (Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure), a seismometer, provided by the French space agency, CNES (Centre national d'etudes spatiales), will record Martian tremors; the HP3 (Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package) sensor package from the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) will analyse the thermal flow from the interior and the physical properties of the Martian surface; and the RISE (Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment) experiment supplied by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) will measure the changes in orientation of the planet's spin axis. But before this, the spacecraft and the instruments on board must undergo final functional tests and inspections to ensure that all components have survived transportation to the launch site without damage.



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