It’s been a good long while since I’ve covered a recent rocket launch, but what better of a launch to come back with than the next Mars mission by NASA – InSight, a probe which will land on and study the interior surface of Mars!
It’s going to be an amazing mission, to be sure, and it all starts, of course, with the launch of the spacecraft. In this case, we have the ever reliable United Launch Alliance Atlas V (in a 401 configuration) as the launch vehicle.
Interestingly, though, this isn’t a normal launch. Every NASA launch to Mars has been from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, in Florida on the East coast of the United States. InSight, however, is being launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, on the West coast of the United States. This launch sight is used for anything launching into a polar orbit, which would normally be very irregular for any interplanetary mission – the planets, of course, orbit like the Earth does along a more “equatorial” path, to keep things simple. A polar orbit type launch is, well, odd, but like any mission, these things are planned for and done intentionally. I just can’t at the moment find out exactly why this was chosen for InSight. (Anyone wanna’ fill me in?)
In any case, InSight will hopefully be launching within just a few hours of me publishing this article – there of course may be delays, but right now it’s planned for a little after 7 A.M. Pacific time – quite a bit early for me, so if it does take flight in the next few hours I’ll have to catch it after the fact.
Regardless of what happens, here’s the main subject of this article – the actual launch profile, which is pretty direct – an initial launch and normal orbital insertion, followed by a second burn of the Centaur stage, deployment of the InSight spacecraft and then the two MARCO cubesats which will relay communications from InSight to Earth and back.
As always with the Atlas V, it’s going to be an amazing launch, so if you get the chance to check it out, go for it!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InSight
https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/