NASA suspends mission to measure interior of Mars

WASHINGTON – NASA has scrapped a key mission designed to probe the interior of Mars after engineers found persistent leaks in a key part of the lander’s sensors.

And they might not get another chance for years.

The launch of the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission was scheduled for March during a narrow window targeted to take advantage of the alignment between both planets. The next favorable alignment won’t occur until May 2018.

NASA and its international partners are confident they can eventually correct the problem, but not before March.

It’s a disappointment to scientists who viewed the mission as a planetary science priority. By the time engineers pulled the plug, the spacecraft had been moved to Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and the Atlas V rocket that was going to send it into space was being assembled.

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“We got very, very close,” John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, told reporters in a conference call Tuesday. “This just reflects the difficulty (of going to Mars). When you challenge scientists and engineers to do something that’s never been done before, sometimes things don’t work out the way you want.”

The first leak was discovered earlier this year in a seismometer provided by France’s Centre National d'Études Spatiales in Toulouse. Designed to measure ground movements as small as the diameter of an atom, the instrument requires a vacuum seal around its three main sensors to withstand the harsh conditions of the Martian environment, according to NASA.

Because of the leak, the seismometer couldn't retain vacuum conditions necessary to take readings. That leak was repaired but other, smaller ones followed. All seemed fixed until Monday when testing in extreme cold temperatures (-49 degrees Fahrenheit/-45 degrees Celsius) found the instrument again failed to hold a vacuum.

NASA and its partners will have to decide whether to pursue the mission after they discover the source of the new leak.

Even if they correct the problem in time for the next launch window two-and-a-half years from now, funding remains a potential obstacle: NASA already has spent $525 million of the $675 million the mission was allotted.

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Though clearly disappointed, NASA officials said scrapping the mission won’t affect any other Mars-related missions.

The Mars 2020 rover is being designed and built while Opportunity and Curiosity rovers are exploring the Martian surface. The Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft currently orbit the planet, as does the MAVEN orbiter, which recently helped scientists understand what happened to the Martian atmosphere.

All of the activity is designed to help NASA prepare for the ultimate mission: sending astronauts to the Red Planet two decades from now.

“It’s not a disaster,” said Bruce Banerdt, InSight’s principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. “It’s just a hiccup on our path to getting this kind of science, this kind of understanding of our solar system and our place in the universe.”