NASA canceled its March 2016 launch of a space probe mission to Mars. This mission was planned to get more data that will give the space agency a deeper look inside Mars.
The Mars lander InSight was said to have a leaking instrument. A faulty weld left of the the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure with persistent air leak in one of its primary tools. NASA and Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) explained that the instrument is incredibly sensitive. It has to operate inside a perfect vacuum. The planet Mars does not have seismic activity that is Earth-like. Any motion that instrument picks up would be minute. SEIS is designed to detect motions on the ground that as microscopic as the width of atom. Operation under an environment that is not a perfect vacuum will net results that can't be trusted.
"Learning about the interior structure of Mars has been a high priority objective for planetary scientists [for decades]," John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said. "We push the boundaries of space technology with our missions to enable science, but space exploration is unforgiving, and the bottom line is that we're not ready to launch in the 2016 window."
The launch window to a Mars mission is difficult to set. The next schedule is 26 months from now. NASA is asked if InSight will be part of the next mission, and the space agency cannot give a firm answer.
"Everything else about the mission is ready to go, and we are already starting to work toward the possibility of continuing on to Mars at the next orbital opportunity in 2018," Bruce Banerdt, InSight's principal investigator at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said.
"Although I have personally been working toward making these measurements on Mars for 25 years, the actual InSight Mission Project has only been underway since about 2009," Banerdt added. "The whole project team has been giving it everything they've got for many months to try to make this launch opportunity, so we are understandably disappointed."
