As NASA's InSight lander prepares to deploys its first experiments on the Martian surface, the space agency has revealed the 'Mars on earth' lab it built in a Pasadena warehouse to test it.
Workers at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, are using a replica of the lander, named ForeSight, to test every command they send to the red planet.
Engineers painstakingly recreated the landing area of craft from high resolution pictures it send back, using crushed rocks to simulate Martian sand.
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The 'Martian rock garden' it built in a Pasadena warehouse to test its InSight rover Engineers practice deploying InSight's instruments in a lab at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Several of them are wearing sunglasses to block the bright yellow lights in the test space, which mimic sunlight as it appears on Mars.
The team raked, shoveled and patted down a bed of crushed garnet intended to simulate Martian sand.
They call the shaping of this gravel-like material 'Marsforming.'
A four-inch (10-centimeter) layer of garnet was added to the lab space in order to match the height and slope of the surface in front of InSight.
Donning augmented-reality headsets allowed the team to project digital terrain models of the landing site onto the test bed, checking whether they needed to scoop more gravel into the space or smooth it out.
Wood blocks marked the perimeter of the areas where the lander's seismometer and heat flow probe could be placed; precision cameras in the lab were used to measure each feature they intended to replicate.
It took about four hours to mimic every detail, down to any pebbles or rocks larger than an inch (2 centimeters).
Larger rocks present various challenges, both to the lander and the instruments it will place on the planet's surface.
The team has to make sure the electrical-wire-laden tethers that connect the instruments to the spacecraft won't catch on or abrade against a sharp rock.
They admit they were incredibly relieved when the first images revealed a flat area.
'It's great for the science we want to do,' said JPL's Marleen Sundgaard, who is leading the project.
'It's the flat parking lot the landing team promised us. You calculate the probability of rocks in the area and hope the odds are in your favor.'
About 70 feet (21 meters) from the lander lies a field of small boulders that would have made Marsforming harder, said Nate Williams, a JPL post-doctoral researcher working with the mission.
'All around us, there are rocks that were ejected from nearby craters.
These can be launched miles across the landscape, depending on the impact size.
Thankfully, there just aren't a lot of rocks right in front of us.'
The team has also used Microsoft's HoloLens AR headset to make sure their recreation is perfect.
Engineers in Pasadena, California, sculpt a gravel-like material to mimic the terrain in front of NASA's InSight lander on Mars. Recreating the exact conditions will allow them to practice setting down the lander's instruments here on Earth before it's done on Mars.
(left) InSight Project Manager Tom Hoffman (standing) and engineer Marleen Sundgaard wear Microsoft HoloLens augmented reality headsets, which project digital terrain models of InSight's landing location on Mars over a lab space. Right, InSight rover Engineers Marleen Sundgaard (left) and Pranay Mishra measure their test lander's "workspace"
The team could see a glowing red Martian surface with blue contour lines modeled on the actual terrain in front of InSight on Mars.
Every bit of additional realism in the lab creates a more reliable test.
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Main photo article As NASA‘s InSight lander prepares to deploys its first experiments on the Martian surface, the space agency has revealed the ‘Mars on earth’ lab it built in a Pasadena warehouse to test it.
Workers at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, are u...
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Dianne Reeves US News HienaLouca
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