transport: InSight

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

The Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission was a robotic lander designed to study the deep interior of the planet Mars. It was manufactured by Lockheed Martin Space, was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and two of its three scientific instruments were built by European agencies. InSight confirmed "marsquakes" on the planet and thus a still active interior. The mission launched on 5 May 2018 at 11:05:01 UTC aboard an Atlas V-401 launch vehicle and successfully landed at Elysium Planitia on Mars on 26 November 2018 at 19:52:59 UTC. InSight was active on Mars for 1440 sols (1480 days; 4 years, 19 days). InSight's object…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Opportunity, also known as MER-B (Mars Exploration Rover – B) or MER-1, and nicknamed Oppy, is a robotic rover that was active on Mars from 2004 until 2018. Opportunity was operational on Mars for 5111 sols (14 years, 138 days on Earth). Launched on July 7, 2003, as part of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover program, it landed in Meridiani Planum on January 25, 2004, three weeks after its twin, Spirit (MER-A), touched down on the other side of the planet. With a planned 90-sol duration of activity (slightly less than 92.5 Earth days), Spirit functioned until it got stuck in 2009 and ceased communications in 2010, while Opportunity was able to stay operational for 5111 sols after landing, maintai…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Sol (borrowed from the Latin word for sun) is a solar day on Mars; that is, a Mars-day. A sol is the apparent interval between two successive returns of the Sun to the same meridian (sundial time) as seen by an observer on Mars. It is one of several units for timekeeping on Mars. A sol is slightly longer than an Earth day. It is approximately 24 hours, 39 minutes, 35 seconds long. A Martian year is approximately 668.6 sols, equivalent to approximately 687 Earth days or 1.88 Earth years. The sol was adopted in 1976 during the Viking Lander missions and is a measure of time mainly used by NASA when, for example, scheduling the use of a Mars rover.

Evidence: — • authority: 72

A marsquake is a quake which, much like an earthquake, is a shaking of the surface or interior of the planet Mars. Such quakes may occur with a shift in the planet's interior, such as the result of plate tectonics, from which most quakes on Earth originate, or possibly from hotspots such as Olympus Mons or the Tharsis Montes. The detection and analysis of marsquakes are informative to probing the interior structure of Mars, as well as potentially identifying whether any of Mars's many volcanoes continue to be volcanically active. Quakes have been observed and well-documented on the Moon, and there is evidence of past quakes on Venus. Marsquakes were first detected but not confirmed by the V…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission was a robotic space mission involving two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, exploring the planet Mars. It began in 2003 with the launch of the two rovers to explore the Martian surface and geology; both landed on Mars at separate locations in January 2004. Both rovers far outlived their planned missions of 90 Martian solar days: MER-A Spirit was active until March 22, 2010, while MER-B Opportunity was active until June 10, 2018.

Evidence: — • authority: 80

Mars quakes: The InSight lander shows active faults in the planet’s crust