Leak on Mars InSight Instrument Threatens Mission's Launch Window

摘要

A vacuum-sealed sphere that holds three seismometers for one of the instruments on NASA's Mars InSight lander suffered a leak that would degrade the instruments' performance, NASA said Dec. 3. The French space agency, CNES, which built the seismometers, is working to repair the leak before shipping the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to Lockheed Martin Space Systems to be integrated with InSight, which Lockheed built in Denver. InSight's other instruments, including the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) from Germany, are already installed.