Mars enthusiasts around the world can participate in NASA’s journey to Mars by adding their names to a silicon microchip headed to the Red Planet aboard NASA’s InSight Mars lander, scheduled to launch next year.

“Our next step in the journey to Mars is another fantastic mission to the surface,” said Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “By participating in this opportunity to send your name aboard InSight to the Red Planet, you’re showing that you’re part of that journey and the future of space exploration.”

Submissions will be accepted until Sept. 8 to send your name to Mars aboard InSight.

The fly-your-name opportunity comes with “frequent flier” points to reflect an individual’s personal participation in NASA’s journey to Mars, which will span multiple missions and multiple decades. The InSight mission offers the second such opportunity for space exploration fans to collect points by flying their names aboard a NASA mission, with more opportunities to follow.

Last December, the names of 1.38 million people flew on a chip aboard the first flight of NASA’s Orion spacecraft, which will carry astronauts to deep space destinations including Mars and an asteroid. After InSight, the next opportunity to earn frequent flier points will be NASA’s Exploration Mission-1, the first planned test flight bringing together the Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule in preparation for human missions to Mars and beyond.

InSight will launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California in March 2016 and land on Mars Sept. 28, 2016. The mission is the first dedicated to the investigation of the deep interior of the planet. It will place the first seismometer directly on the surface of Mars to measure Martian quakes and use seismic waves to learn about the planet’s interior. It also will deploy a self-hammering heat probe that will burrow deeper into the ground than any previous device on the Red Planet. These and other InSight investigations will improve our understanding about the formation and evolution of all rocky planets, including Earth.

Additional information about the InSight mission.
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Top Image: This artist’s concept from August 2015 depicts NASA’s InSight Mars lander fully deployed for studying the deep interior of Mars.  The mission will launch during the period March 4 to March 30, 2016, and land on Mars Sept. 28, 2016.

InSight, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, will investigate processes that formed and shaped Mars. Its findings will improve understanding about the evolution of our inner solar system’s rocky planets, including Earth.

The lander will be the first mission to permanently deploy instruments directly onto Martian ground using a robotic arm. The two instruments to be placed into a work area in front of the lander are a seismometer (contributed by the French space agency Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, or CNES) to measure the microscopic ground motions from distant marsquakes providing information about the interior structure of Mars, and a heat-flow probe (contributed by the German Aerospace Center, or DLR) designed to hammer itself 3 to 5 meters (about 16 feet) deep and monitor heat coming from the planet’s interior. The mission will also track the lander’s radio to measure wobbles in the planet’s rotation that relate to the size of its core and a suite of environmental sensors to monitor the weather and variations in the magnetic field. Two cameras will aid in instrument deployment and monitoring the local environment.

The image is an annotated with the following features labeled:

      • Grapple – Mechanism at the end of the IDA that grips the instruments during deployment

      • Heat Flow Probe – Hammering mechanism that pulls the temperature sensors down into the regolith

      • HP3 – Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package, the heat flow experiment

      • IDC – Instrument Deployment Camera, pointable medium-resolution camera

      • IDA – Instrument Deployment Arm

      • ICC – Instrument Context Camera, fixed wide-angle camera

      • Pressure Inlet – Wind-shielded opening for pressure sensor

      • RISE Antenna – X-band radio antenna for the Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment

      • SEIS – Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure, the seismometer

      • Tethers – Cables carrying electrical power, commands and data between the lander and instruments

      • TWINS – Temperature and Winds for InSight, environmental sensors

      • UHF Antenna – Antenna used for communication with orbital relay spacecraft

      • WTS – Wind and Thermal Shield protecting the seismometer from the environment

InSight is part of NASA’s Discovery Program of competitively selected solar system exploration missions with highly focused scientific goals.

Filed under: Mars