Troublesome Leak Grounds NASA's Next Mission To Mars

Lest we forget, space travel remains an incredibly tricky endeavor. 

One day after SpaceX made history with an epic launch and vertical landing of its Falcon 9 rocket, bringing mankind one step closer to private space travel, NASA announced that it has suspended its upcoming mission to Mars -- because of a leak.

The decision to ground the new Mars lander, dubbed InSight, follows unsuccessful attempts to repair the leak, which involves a key scientific instrument.

"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," John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement.

NASA/JPL-Caltech via AP

An artist's rendering depicts the InSight lander studying the interior of Mars.

The InSight spacecraft -- the name is short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport -- was set to launch in March and arrive on Mars in late September. NASA said the "terrestrial planet explorer" will study Mars' interior and help scientists understand the processes that shaped the rocky planets of the inner solar system, including Earth, more than 4 billion years ago.

The mission-delaying leak is in the seismometer, an instrument made by France's Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES) and designed to measure ground movements as tiny as the diameter of an atom.

"It's the first time ever that such a sensitive instrument has been built," said Marc Pircher, director of CNES's Toulouse Space Centre. "We were very close to succeeding, but an anomaly has occurred, which requires further investigation. Our teams will find a solution to fix it, but it won't be solved in time for a launch in 2016."

The Associated Press reports that since the best opportunities for launching missions between Earth and Mars occur during a short window of time -- just a few weeks every 26 months -- InSight won't have another chance before May 2018.

NASA officials said Tuesday that they must now decide whether the faulty instrument should be repaired or redesigned or whether the mission should be scrapped. So far, a reported $525 million has been spent on the $675 million mission.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Lockheed Martin

The solar arrays on NASA's InSight lander are deployed during a test conducted in a clean room at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver.

The disappointing news for NASA comes in the wake of a triumph for billionaire Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX. On Monday, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket into orbit, deployed 11 satellites, and then brought the 15-story booster back to Earth for a soft, vertical landing just six miles from where it took off at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Musk called it a "revolutionary moment" and a "critical step along the way to being able to establish a city on Mars."

Despite its decision to call off the planned March launch of InSight, NASA said work remains on track toward the agency's larger goal -- an ambitious journey to Mars, including human travel there in the 2030s. 

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Shallow Irregular Pits with Raised Rims

Researchers are still trying to figure out what caused these "mystery" features. One intriguing theory suggests they were sculpted by ancient glaciation.

NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Shallow Irregular Pits with Raised Rims

Researchers are still trying to figure out what caused these "mystery" features. One intriguing theory suggests they were sculpted by ancient glaciation.

NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

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Raindrops of Sand in Copernicus Crater

The dark features here look like raindrops, but are actually sand dunes. This spot was targeted an infrared spectrometer on the Mars Orbiter because the dunes are rich in the mineral olivine. Olivine-rich dunes are very rare on Earth, as olivine rapidly weathers to clays in a wet environment. There is also olivine-rich bedrock in the central peaks of Copernicus Crater on the Moon. (Caption: Alfred McEwen)

NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

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Bright Tracks from Bouncing and Rolling Boulders

This image shows a well-preserved impact crater. A closeup view highlights distinctive bright lines and spots on the steep slope on the north side. No such pattern was visible when HiRISE imaged this crater 5 years ago (2.6 Martian years ago), in March 2008. The discontinuous bright spots indicate bouncing, thus these features are interpreted to be a result of boulders bouncing and rolling down the slope. Where did the boulders come from? Maybe they fell from the crater's steep upper cliffs, although we don't see any new bright features there that point to the source. Maybe the rocks were ejected from a new impact event somewhere nearby. Why are the trails bright? Perhaps the shallow subsurface soil here is generally brighter than the surface soil, as revealed by the Spirit rover in a part of Gusev Crater. It can't be bright from ice because this is a warm equator-facing slope seen in the summer. (Caption: Alfred McEwen)

NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

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Ridges and Grooves That Wave and Buckle on a Valley Floor

Long linear ridges and grooves curve, wave, and buckle across most of this image. Here, as elsewhere on Mars, these linear ridges and grooves fill a valley floor, hence their name, "lineated valley fill." Because these features are only found in valleys in the middle latitudes (30 to 60 degrees) of the Northern and Southern hemispheres, scientists had long suspected that they were associated with some ancient climate that had prevailed in that latitudinal band. Based on peering beneath the surface using radar, scientists now think that lineated valley fill is probably merely a rocky veneer atop a glacier of nearly pure ice! The rocks that make up the linear ridges and grooves were oriented by the ancient flow of the glacier underneath. (Caption: Ethan Schaefer)

NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

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Megabreccia on the Floor of an Impact Crater

"'Megabreccia' is a term we use to describe jumbled, fragmented blocks of rock larger than 1 meter across, in a matrix of finer-grained materials," per the HiRISE website. "It's the result of energetic processes, typically from an impact event."

NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

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Defrosting of Dunes with Large Gullies

The purpose of this observation is to image dunes where substantial "gullies" formed in the previous Martian winter. These features likely formed due to carbon dioxide defrosting or weight that caused the surface to slump. The gullies at this site are particularly large, which is intriguing, suggesting that this site be monitored to see if stages of gully formation or details of activity can be observed. (Caption: HiRISE Science Team)

NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

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Martian Honeycomb Hideout

The most striking aspect of this image is the honeycomb-like pattern of the dunes. This is a seasonal monitoring site, meaning HiRISE takes pictures across the seasons to view what changes occur and what causes them. The surface here is covered with seasonal carbon dioxide frost. In this case, we can compare locations of cracks in the frost to previous images. (Caption: HiRISE Science Team)

NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

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