On December 6, 2018, NASA’s InSight lander used a camera on its robotic arm to snap a view of itself and the surroundings. Visible in the selfie are the lander’s solar panel and its entire deck, including its science instruments.
This image shows InSight’s solar panels and deck; on top of the deck are its science instruments, weather sensor booms and UHF antenna. The selfie was taken on December 6, 2018 (Sol 10). The selfie is made up of 11 images which were taken by its Instrument Deployment Camera, located on the elbow of its robotic arm. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
After an almost seven-month, 300-million-mile (458 million km) journey from Earth, InSight touched down on November 26, 2018, near Mars’ equator on the western side of a flat, smooth expanse of lava called Elysium Planitia.
InSight’s landing team deliberately chose a landing region in Elysium Planitia that is relatively free of rocks.
Even so, the landing spot turned out even better than they hoped.
The lander sits in what appears to be a nearly rock-free ‘hollow’ – a depression created by a meteor impact that later filled with sand.
That should make it easier for one of InSight’s instruments, the heat-flow probe, to bore down to its goal of 16 feet (5 m) below the surface.
“The near-absence of rocks, hills and holes means it’ll be extremely safe for our instruments,” said InSight principal investigator Dr. Bruce Banerdt, a researcher NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“This might seem like a pretty plain piece of ground if it weren’t on Mars, but we’re glad to see that.”
This mosaic, made of 52 individual images from NASA’s InSight lander, shows the workspace where the spacecraft will eventually set its science instruments. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
InSight also sent back a mosaic of images of its workspace — the approximately 14 x 7-foot (4 x 2 m) crescent of terrain directly in front of the spacecraft.
In the coming weeks, the mission team will go through the painstaking process of deciding where in this workspace the spacecraft’s instruments should be placed.
They will then command InSight’s robotic arm to carefully set the seismometer — the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) — and heat-flow probe — known as the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) — in the chosen locations.
Both work best on level ground, and the engineers want to avoid setting them on rocks larger than about a half-inch (1.3 cm).
