Heat Shield Construction for NASA’s InSight Mission

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Caption:

In this February 2015 scene from a clean room at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, specialists are building the heat shield to protect NASA's InSight spacecraft when it is speeding through the Martian atmosphere.

Background Info:

InSight, for Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is scheduled to launch in March 2016 and land on Mars in September 2016. The lander will investigate the deep interior of Mars to gain information about how rocky planets, including Earth, formed and evolved.

The InSight Project is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, which is managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Photojournal Note : After thorough examination, NASA managers have decided to suspend the planned March 2016 launch of the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission. The decision follows unsuccessful attempts to repair a leak in a section of the prime instrument in the science payload.

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