NASA’s latest Mars lander, which executed a perfect touchdown on a rubble-free plain on November 25 after a six-month journey of 91 million miles, is unlike previous robotic explorers. Rather than orbit the planet or rove its surface to relay atmospheric and topographical information, the InSight rover is larded with sensitive instruments designed to dig deep into the Martian interior for the first time. The mission’s goal: Study the size, thickness, density, and overall structure of the Red Planet’s core, mantle, and crust, and also determine how quickly heat escapes from its interior.

The data will provide a better understanding of the evolutionary processes of all the rocky planets in our solar system.

Click HERE for raw images InSight has beamed back from Mars and HERE for images from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s mission control center celebrating the successful landing.

Meanwhile, a future Mars mission may include sending robotic bees. The Marsbees would be around the size of a bumblebee and feature cicada-size wings as well as a miniature video camera, sensors, and wireless communication device. They’d fly in swarms and could be used to create 3-D maps to help guide a rover over the rugged Martian terrain. They could also be used to measure the atmosphere’s temperature and chemical composition. Chang-kwon Kang, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, recently won a nine-month, $125,000 Phase 1 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts grant to determine if his flapping-wing design would give the robotic bees sufficient lift in the low-gravity Martian environment—news that generated a fair amount of media buzz.

This article was adapted from “Beeline for Mars” by Thomas K. Grose, which appeared in the May 2018 issue of ASEE’s Prism magazine. Excerpt illustration credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Filed under: Special Features

Tags: Aerospace, Engineering, InSight, Mars, Marsbees, NASA, rover, space exploration