Jay Clemens
Lockheed Martin has kicked off environmental tests on NASA’s InSight Mars spacecraft after the company completed system assembly work.
InSight Mars will be subjected to a thermal vacuum test in the spacecraft’s cruise configuration, reverberant acoustic, separation and deployment shock, and electromagnetic interference and compatibility testing at Lockheed’s facilities near Denver, the company said Wednesday.
Lockheed will complete the testing phase with a second thermal vacuum test meant to assess the spacecraft’s endurance with temperatures and atmospheric pressures similar to what the lander will experience in Mars.
“The environmental testing regimen is designed to wring out any issues with the spacecraft so we can resolve them while it’s here on Earth,†said Stu Spath, InSight program manager at Lockheed.
InSight is scheduled for launch in March 2016 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California to collect data about the interior of Mars for research to understand the planet’s evolution.
