41 – Thirty Years to the Centre of Mars (feat. Bruce Banerdt, Philippe Lognonné & Tim Linn)

Play Episode (40:44)

NASA’s InSight mission, a lander to study the interior of Mars, lifted off from California on May 5th, 2018. For the scientists working on this geophysics mission, it’s been a long time coming. Jake travels down to Vandenberg to “see” the launch, and gets behind the scenes to hear the true story of this mission, thirty years in the making. Jake is joined by InSight Principal Investigator Bruce Banerdt, SEIS instrument Principal Investigator Philippe Lognonné, and Lockheed Martin Deputy Project Manager for InSight, Tim Linn.

We Discuss NASA’s InSight Mission

• The InSight website
• The Verge Science Launch Video
• 1991’s Mars Global Network Mission Paper (incl author Banerdt)
• 1992’s Intermarsnet (incl authors Banerdt and Lognonné)
• 1999’s Netlander (incl author Lognonné)
• 2003 Planetary Sciences Decadal Survey
• 2010 Mission Concept Study, Mars Geophysical Network
• 2010 MGN Options Study (InSight was originally option “G”)
• 2013 Planetary Sciences Decadal Survey
• 2011 Discovery Finalists Announced (incl. GEMS, which became InSight)
• 2011 JPL Changes name of GEMS to InSight
• 2012 InSight selected as Discovery 12
• 2015 SEIS leak delays launch of InSight

Previous Coverage of InSight

• Episode 2: Every Twenty Six Months (covers InSight’s delay from 2016)
• Episode 36: Systems Engineering InSight (feat. Farah Alibay, Payload Systems Engineer)

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WeMartians music is “RetroFuture” and “On My Way” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/