1979 c-span was created as a public service by america's wele television companies continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress. c-span is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. nasa's mission to mars is coming up this weekend. scientists and engineers held a press briefing yesterday and took questions from reporters as and as some on the phone online. we will show you as much of this as we can until the vice president begins his speech at 1:15 today. >> hello and welcome to the insight prelaunch briefing. my name is stephanie smith with

the media department of the jet department. we are here today for the historic insight mission. we are going to get to know the mission and some of the people behind the mission. this aircraft will be the first to study the interior -- the deep interior of mars and be the first west coast interplanetary launch ever. that's why we are all here in the nasa hangar with over 100 members of the media and credentialed social media to cover this mission. we are taking questions in the house and taking questions from the social media with the #asked and please press star want to get in the queue. takes offs mission from the golden state to the red

planet we will talk about the science goals, the instrumentation and the insight. how does it fit together? to give us an overview of what insight will do and how it fits into nasa's plans for exploration both mars and planetary exploration we have nasa's chief scientist jim graham. tell these folks about what you do. >> welcome to the prelaunch briefing. this is a fantastic mission. it is a planetary mission of the discovery program. the discovery program is all about doing it first, getting to places that we have never been before and this mission will probe the interior of another terrestrial planet giving us an on insight of the core the crust , and our ability to compare

that with the earth. tos is a fundamental understand the origin of our solar system and how it became the way it is today. in addition to fundamental planetary science, this mission speed forward to human expiration on mars, how we know that mars quakes. we have seen avalanches from the mars reconnaissance orbiter. something has produced is kind of scenes. in addition, meteorites make it to the surface and impact causing quakes. what are the mars quakes all about? take a goodion will look at all those aspects. for human expiration?

here in california in particular you know we need to be able to build the structures necessary to withstand the environments that we are in. this is a very quite prone area that'scountry, fundamental information that we need to know as humans then to explore mars. ,verything in the solar system these large planets that are put together are still cooling off and that includes mars. down andprobe will go measure the temperature difference. that difference could be large, could be small, but it is an important part of knowledge on .ow this planet is evolving can it give us information about how we might use that he differential to heat a habitat. we know the temperature on mars in one day, 170 degrees .ahrenheit change in one day

we have to be able as humans living on mars and working on mars to survive that. how can our resources that we discover on mars enabled that. this mission does so many not only inthings planetary science but in human exploration. it is a very popular mission. how popular? we asked people if they would like to add their name to a chip . one of the chips, this is what it looks like, and the response was unbelievable. 2.4 million names are on this chip. it is affixed to the surface of the spacecraft. how cool is that. i hope you are one of them. it's too late to put your name on this one. it is already ready to go. saturday we will launch at. with that, may i take a question

or two? >> if you didn't get your name i insight you probably can get your name on 2020. let's take some questions. we have a reporter on the phone line. let's go to the phones. >> if we have a phone connection please take your name and affiliation. thank you. i would like to know if you could talk about the decision , when a leak15 occurred on mars insight and the process to keep the mission going at that time as opposed to stopping it. if you will let us know how the decision was made. >> the question is really all

windows.netary when we select a mission to be completed we have in mind that it is going any particular window. planetary windows are a blessing , that means we have to get our mission together but it is also a curse. when not everything is working well and we miss that window, we have to wait for the next one. for mars for everything to lineup again that allows us to launch to mars, that window is every 26 months. this saturday,ts may 5, and will go until june 8. if we can't watch insight then we wait 26 months. wererevious window that we plenty to launch we could not

get it together. that happens every once in a while. this business is tough and these are one-of-a-kind missions. they are making extraordinarily important observations and they need the scientific basis of this mission and its lead forward in human exploration was a factor in the decision to keep to complete the instrumentation and get it right for the launch. that enables us to be in the position we are in with a space craft is sitting, ready to go to mars. everything is in top shape. >> thank you. [applause] noticed thathave there is a full scale mockup here today.

talk a little bit more about the design, build and spacecraft with the actual hardware, please insighttom hoffman, the project manager and the project manager from lockheed. i will give you the floor. >> thank you. what you see in front is the fully deployed spacecraft. we have the solar rays, the beyond the that go surface. i will explain about how this is on the rocket but before i do that, i am really excited, i am going to mars. are you guys excited to go to mars? a labor of love for me for seven years. i have been on the project since the beginning. i cannot describe to you in

words how very excited i am to see at this point ready to go off to mars, ready to send this to another planet. this is what we look like once we get fully ready to take our science to mars. before that we start out different. solar rays folded up underneath the back, these ,,kes here are all tucked up we have an air show around it, i we have a cruise stage on the back as well as that is all ready to go. one of the cool things for me being a native californian, this is the first time we are doing a launch from the west coasts. we are breaking the monopoly that the floridians have had.

what i would like to do is play a video for you. this will look like what the launch will look like. we launch, one of the cool things if you are in southern california and you get up really at 4:05 on saturday you will be able to see this from your back yard and this shows you what the view is, from wayral california all the down to mexico you should get a pretty good view of the spacecraft at that time. it will be the brightest object in the sky. once we get that launch off we still have to get to mars. during that time we do trajectory crashing maneuvers.

that allows us to land on the surface of mars on november 26 of this year, which is cyber monday. if you are doing your holiday shopping and you want to see something else you can put that on your other screen. put it on and you can see it land. we will land about noon on the 26th of november. that will be really cool. once we get there we have to go through entry and landing phase, andt out at 12,500 miles hour and then get down to 5000 hour when we land. i have a video to show you that describes that progress. hot, we areg in still going at supersonics eads when we pop off the parachute.

once we get down to a good speed we drop off the heat shield. you can see the spacecraft and we go to the ground with our radar. we get down to the right velocity we free fall for a while. the lakes popout in this configuration. out.s pop a little bit more about what we do in a minute. the next step is we deploy these elements from the deck to the ground. it is basically a second landing , we are only three feet from the ground. that will take us a little bit of time.

what we are going to do once we land is we will take some textures to see what the terrain looks like. we will reproduce that terrain and practice deploying each of the instruments over and over again to make sure we get it right. that will take us about two months to get the instruments from the deck to the ground. video that goes really fast, show the next video. place,ar rays early in putting the seismometer down first, that's what this is, then wetake the thermal shield, place it over the top of it and that insulates it from the environment as well as we can from mars. once those are deployed and check out then we take off the

physicist -- physical properties package. i wish it went as fast as this video. my fear would be a different shade of blonde than it is now. but it doesn't work that fast. we get down to that point and now we are set for the scientists to get the science that they want. you'll hear a lot more about that in a few minutes. say --that i do want to this is an international collaboration. there are people from all over the world. it takes villages across the globe to make this happen, instruments and partners, we have our -- being built by lucky denver. lockheed denver.

we have been both on this wesion for seven years and wrote the previous discovery mission to the moon. it is great to be able to work with steve again. thank you. appreciate it. [applause] because lockheed martin has worked on previous mission someone has been recently what is the insight mission routine. i was still a little bit from tom hanks in apollo 13, there's nothing routine about going to mars. we are happy to be a part of this mission. i have been on the program for about seven years now, i can attest that on saturday morning the excitement and into the patient will be second to none. i will be so happy to get this

off the ground. the three phases that we participate in our the designl and development of the components that test phase and on the play operation. for the design and development those of you have been involved in the mars program, you will notice it looks a lot like phoenix lander which was launched in 2007. that is intentional. we want to build on our previous successes on these missions. wee of these things inherited from phoenix is the basic structure, the three legs on that landing phase, the thrusters under here and the flu will -- fuel tank.

there are quite a few things that are different. the interior of the lander which you cannot see are the is like tronics, the avionics. maven.re inherited from we have modernized the electronic from the previous era. has askedenix, this band telecommunication systems. the antenna here that goes direct to earth with a radio science beacon. investigation,ce it's one of the cases where scienceft doubles as a investigation. the second phase is the integration and test. we have to assemble the plate system and test it so it is ready for the rigors of space.

if you could in -- role that integration video. this was filmed in the denver base facilities. you see the lander early on, installing the components. this gets us to the planet, not shown here. this is early on before the components have been installed. long deep- this is a chamber and the inside lander is being lowered in that. this video, one of the first later we do 15 minutes the solar rays are deployed. this is the final tests we did

before packing up --. ,he final operation in denver the yellowish component is the heat shield that is installed over the back shell and gets put into the shipping container and flown out here to vandenberg. we will talk about flight operations. from the moment this list off on saturday to the end of the mission, the team will be participating from denver doing that commanding and monitoring and so forth. we will be involved in the mission from the entire launch. to the end of the mission. saying thankp by you and a big shout out to all of the hundreds of men and women that made this happen. it was not an easy task.

i just wanted to say it is going to be a great mission and we are happy to be a part of it and we are go to launch. with that we will open it up to questions. any question about engineering, instrumentation and the space craft. please raise your hand and wait for a microphone runner to get to you. state your name and affiliation. is it better or easier to go to mars from florida and why. doingare going to end up one orbit like a polar orbit and are left turn on our way to mars. getting out of the same trajectory as if we launch from kennedy space center.

equatorot close to the and we need to get there. >> another question here? daily, could you elaborate on how long you think you will be able to receive data? >> the mission is designed to last one mars year so 26 birth months. but there is nothing that is life-limiting on this system, so hopefully it will last longer than that. stephanie: it looks like we have social media questions on this side. shannon, if you could go to the front row. >> hi, my name is -- i am representing m.i.t students right now. i have a question about thrusters.

after speaking with lockheed martin representative earlier, i learned that there are no redundant thrusters. with such a high risk maneuver, having a propulsive landing, how do you account for that risk? how do you justify not having any backup thrusters? >> again, because this is so high heritage in the system from phoenix we do not consider it a , high risk. the main components of the it andr -- phoenix did almost 40 years before that, viking did it. landing is the technique we used at lockheed martin and we feel it is flight proven and ready to go. >> we have a reporter on the phone lines. aerospace america. go ahead.

>> thank you. nasa insights will dig deeper into mars than ever before. it will use that self spies -- self driving spike to drive the heat probe into the ground. do you have contingency plans if the ground is tougher than you anticipate? >> this will be a good question to ask tillman. but we have done a tremendous amount of testing. we feel confident we are going to a location on mars where we will successfully penetrate. even if we do it some rocks, we have a reasonably good chance of getting past those and getting down to the depth that we want which is about 10 feet. that is the requirement. the goal is about 16 feet. tillman will talk a lot more about that coming up in the next section. >> ok, we have another question on the phone lines from reuters. reuters, go ahead.

reuters, can you hear us? >> hello, thank you for taking my call. how many missions have there been to mars? either by way of landers, orbiters and rovers? does somebody know? >> i think the answer is 21 u.s. missions. does that sound right, dennis? >> that sounds about right. >> we are going with 21. >> we will get that number for your after the show. thank you so much. a big round of applause. [applause] 4.5 billion years old and not one visit to the doctor. i think we can all agree that mars is overdue for a checkup. insight will be checking the pulse, the reflexes and the temperature of the planet.

please welcome to the stage, the insight principal investigator from nasa's jet propulsion laboratory. after he says a few remarks, we will have some other key members of the science team. the deputy project manager. the investigation lead. and the hp lead from dnr. -- from dl are. we are going to start with you bruce, how long have you been working to put a seismometer on the planet? >> i guess i was there on the first date. before there was a spacecraft or even instruments, there is the scientific questions. those have been around since the beginning of planetary exploration. those questions are something that intrigued me when i was in

graduate school. finally, in the late 1980's, 19 90's, i started working on planetary seismic missions. this mission started coming into play, and ideas were coming together in the early 2000's. i have been working on this for more than 25 years. you can imagine how incredibly exciting it is for me to be here today. not 25 years, not two years, not even two days away from launching to mars. this is really amazing. and the science that we want to do with this mission, and the reason we are going to mars, is the science of understanding the early solar system. how planets form? how rocky planets form? the way we can do this is by using the fact that the terrestrial planets all have certain similarities.

they all formed in basically the same ways. today, we know that mars the , earth, and mercury all have basically the same structure. they have a very dense, heavy, iron-nickel core. they have a rocky mantle made of relatively dense silicate rocks. not the kind you see on the surface but rocks that have been put together and the atoms have been pushed together. the planets were all formed from the same kind of stuff. meteorites. they planets all formed from the same kind of stuff. they all formed from cometary stuff. and somehow, we ended up with planets with very different structures. that process is called differentiation.

when the planets first form, they melt either completely or partially and then they start to separate. the heavy stuff sinks to the bottom. the light stuff floats to the top. that process sounds relatively simple but what happens is it starts getting mixed up and we don't know exactly how that works. we want to understand where the earth came from. how the planet we live on came to be the way it is today. we look at the earth's history and we run into a brick wall. the earth is so active. the evidence of the processes has been erased by plate tectonics, vigorous mantle convection. by vigorous, we mean millimeters per year. the earth really does not have that evidence anymore. we went to the moon and the moon has a lot of evidence left over.

it froze itself pretty early in its history but it is so small, the pressures and temperatures inside are only characteristic of the earth down to about 100 miles or 150 miles. the bulk of the earth's interior underwent processes that never happened on the moon. mars is a unique opportunity. we call it the goldilocks planet. not too big. not too small. it is just right. it has undergone the processes of planetary differentiation that the earth did but about 20 million or 50 million years after it was formed, it stopped. we have lots of geology going on on the surface but those processes are still retained in the deep interior. that is why we want to measure the fundamental parameters of the deep interior. the thickness of that crossed which gives us the amount of scum that has floated to the surface. the size and the density of the

core that tells us how much iron some down to the center. and how much other elements were brought with it. it is not pure iron. if it was pure iron it would be frozen solid today. since we have other things mixed in, it allows the core to stay molten. it lowers the temperature. just like when you throw salt on a frozen sidewalk, it melts the sidewalk. and so, we want to know what the composition of the core is, what its size is, and the structure of the mantle. and the dynamics which is related to energy and temperature. we do that with three basic investigations. the first is the seismometer.

this allows us to see deep into the planet. to have insight into the planets. and it uses the seismic waves that are generated by mars' quakes. they are generated by vibrations. but, it is not actually going to measure the things that will shake the space craft around. it is measuring small vibrations that start on the other side of the planet, travel all the way through, and come up under the surface, underneath the spacecraft. by the time those get to incite, they are small. we do this on the earth, more or less routinely. in california, we pick up earthquakes in japan, and from the middle of the ocean and europe. all over the place. many times a day. that is considered routine. it is not so routine on mars. what we are trying to measure is vibrations that are so small, they are on the scale of an atom.

the resolution is about one half the radius of a hydrogen atom. it is expletively precise as a measurement. there are other sensors to keep track of the weather, magnetic fields and other information that can creep into our data. we want to understand what seismic waves are. as they travel through the planet, they pick up information along the way. when they travel through rocks, different rocks of fact though waves in different ways. all of the wiggles you see on raysic raise, -- seismic sometimes after an earthquake, , scientists understand how to take the shape of the wiggles, their frequency, the area platoon, their polarization from the tiny -- all kinds of properties of the waves and pull out the information that the waves picked up along their path. and after we have this information, we can put together a three-dimensional view of the

inside of mars. the second instrument is the heat flow and physical properties package. this goes deep into the martian soil about 16 feet and it measures not just the temperature but the temperature all along the whole that it has gone down. the instrument is actually the cable that it pulls behind it. tillman will tell us more about that later but basically it allows us to understand the energy budget of the plan, that is driving the evolution of the planet. finally, we have our radio science experiment.

that is not an instrument but the radio transmitter on the spacecraft. it has a couple of antennas. these conical things. these look at the morning and the evening horizon as earth rises and sets. and it communicates directly with the deep space network stations on earth. the big dishes out in the desert. it transmits a radio wave up to the spacecraft. have a transceiver that sense the signal back down to earth without a break in the signal. it is vibrating at about 3-5 gigahertz. we do not even break that wave. it comes back down and by analyzing the doppler of the signal and its timing, we can track the location of the spacecraft at mars, 60 million or 100 million miles away with a accuracy of something around a foot or so or less. which to me is as close as you can get to magic and still besides. that you can actually make those kinds of determinations. we track it through the day. over the course of the year, we

can watch that north pole wobble because of the core sloshing inside the planet. that gives us a tight constraint on the size and density of the core as well as its composition. that tells us the structure of mars. the structure of mars tells us something about the processes that put that together. we can put those into our models extrapolate the earth, and , understand how the earth formed 4.5 billion years ago. that is the crux behind the science of the mission. >> we are unpacking a lot of awesome in a small space and time this afternoon. i want to make sure that we get a couple of minutes with each of our science team members. let us turn it over. would you like to say a few words?

>> good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. i am the deputy of the project manager. what a great achievement today to be altogether close to the launch. i am proud to represent the french space agency and the engineering teams. so, i just want to focus on two challenges in which we have succeeded. the first is to coordinate five countries including the united states. in the oversight that germany provides for the leveling system. great britain provides the seismometer. provides the --ctronic box inside the

concerning the french space from the seismometer also, it provides all of the system engineering. we integrate these instruments and perform all of the tests required by nasa. another -- can i get some pictures, please? another challenge we faced and succeeded at were to validate the functional and performance space. we wanted to simulate the gravity. we had to turn our seismometer up to 68 degrees. to have it operating.

at ambience, it is easy to have to be able to validate this because on mars, the temperature can be very cold. you can see on the picture that we have our team. the first one, please? we can see the huge mechanical -- to be able to tilt our instruments. we also performed a final test at the beginning of this year. it was a great achievement for our teams. as you can see in the corner, you can see bruce and philippe attending a test in the black forest.

it is an old silver mine. with our model, we can validate the performance requirements and we can say today, we have reached the required requirements. finally, we participated and it was interesting and instructive for all of the teams to participate with these tests. for the five countries, we have around 250 men and women who participate in this challenge and are ready to launch on saturday. we thank them for trusting us from the beginning. it has been a wonderful adventure.

and for all of the team, it was very fruitful to share. >> ok, thank you so much. [applause] we just have a couple of minutes. >> i am the lead investigator of the seismometer. first, with the first slide, i will continue to thank all of the technical team around the world and the space agencies who made this mission possible. for seismology, it will be a piece of history, a new page of history. we started this on the earth 130 years ago. we started the seismology on the moon 50 years ago. and we will start seismology tomorrow by launching the mission.

it is a new planet is where we discover something. the key point -- and my colleagues told you a lot about the seismology but i want to convince you we can detect the inside of something with this seismology. give me something. >> anything you want. >> i will ask you a question. i will make an impact like this. tell me if this is full or nothing. you must know immediately the answer because you got the sound of the planet. this is a wave. it is almost like a seismic wave and i was making an impact with my hand. you immediately get that there is nothing inside and we will do the same thing on mars with impact and we will find that there is a lot of stuff inside. i have a movie for you. give me mars back, please.

[laughter] i am not finished. we have one lander and we need to detect waves. the point is that we will have a quake. the waves turn around the planet. the nice thing is we know exactly what is the distance of the planet. when we catch the wave two times -- the first time, it will be arriving first and the second time is when the wave has made a full turn. it is like in a stadium and you will immediately get the speed of the wave and this tells you everything from the inside. you can see on the movie that the big problem is that this dot at the end is the wave after a full turn. it is 10 times smaller than the big wave because there is a lot of distance to go through. ok give me the next slide. , i am done with mars because i know the interior now. i need to detect a smaller signal.

the sensor inside must be protected against temperature and wind. next slide, you have the thermal protection. next slide, this is what you see here but on the top of that we will put the wind shield to protect the seismometer. this is like a vault we will carry on mars. not like a gold mine. this is something we've use. we need to deploy that and you need to see that for the first time, and this is the next slide and the last one, yes -- for the first time, we will deploy something with a robot on the planet. this was made on the moon by many astronauts.

here, you have the robot and we and ite arm of the robot will do the job to display -- deploy the seismometer. seismology is not the only thing we want to do. we also want to do heat flow. and for that i will give the floor to my colleagues. >> thank you very much. [applause] the interior structure is important. planets are engines. they use internal heat to do geology on the surface. as everyone in california should know. i am tillman from the german earthquake center and i spent most of my scientific career studying the internal heat of planets. and now, thanks to this mission, i have a chance of measuring the

-- characterizing mars like an engine just like a thermal engineer would do that would use the thermal heat radiating. that is what we are doing that we are measuring the heat from the interior of mars. how are we going to do this? this is our experiment. this package. it has a tower here in which we have a probe that hammers itself into the ground. and then a compartment in which we have a tether that is equipped with sensitive temperature sensors that it carries behind it and measures the temperatures. i have a video to show you how this all works. can we have the video? [video clip] to the left, we can see the hammer that is pulled up. it is hammering on to the anvil.

and it is driven by a spring that is compressed as the motor drives the hammer up. we are not going down at once. we are stopping every two feet or so to take a measurement of the thermal conductivity of the soil. we do that by heating the mole and measure the temperature of the mole itself as a measure of the heat of escaping. we do this 10 times until we reach the final depth of 16 feet and then we switch on the temperature sensors and record the temperature over depth and time for up to two years. taking the temperature gradient, or the rate at which it increases times the , conductivity, gives us the heat flow. very simple. very straightforward.

as in planetary science, the devil is in the details. thank you very much and i'm ready to take questions. >> ok, we have time for just a couple of questions here in the house. let us get a microphone over here. and on deck, a microphone on this side. >> my question is regarding the seismometer. normally, it is put on bedrock. here it is right on the surface. how confident are you that you will get good results? >> we made a lot of models. on the top of that -- most of the time, you have to see the problem is not the fact that the waves are not able to go through, but that the seismometer is able to move a little bit. that is why we cover it with a

shield. we have a system that relieves the tension of the cable to the seismometer. we have made models and tests and we are very confident to meet the requirements of all of that stuff. >> ok, and we had one question on this side. >> i'm wondering if the heat flow probe will be able to tell us about the ice below the surface of mars and if that will help us with drilling to find -- drilling for water in future manned missions? >> bruce, do you want to take a crack at that. >> the place -- inside the landing is close to the equator of mars. all of our calculations of the stability of ice is that we do not expect ice to be present below insight. seismically it is possible to detect ice although our experiment is not optimized for that kind of detection.

if there was a very thick layer of ice, and by that i mean fractions of a mile, not many feet, that would affect the us toc waves and allow tease that information out of the data. we really do not expect to have that as a component of this mission because of the location we are going to. >> we can see it in the seismic conductivity. >> ok, we have a question on the phone lines from irish television. >> from dublin. the home of the man who invented seismology, robert malice. i have a question. i am sorry but this new format has thrown me a little bit. if i may ask the engineers and mr. green or dr. green a question. going back to the first question

of this session what happened , with the seismometer that caused the two year delay? and for dr. green, did nasa at some stage consider canceling this mission? >> dr. green is no longer in the house. >> i was very involved in both those processes. the thing that caused us to delay the launch in 2015 was a problem with the seismometer. they are kept in a hard vacuum inside a spherical cavity. but you need to be able to get the signals in and out and the power in and out through that cavity and so we have feedthroughs. one of those was not capable of maintaining itself under temperature extremes. when we tested it at mars

conditions going down 100 , degrees celsius, it developed a very tiny crack and began to -- started leaking, allowing air in. a small leak. i calculated once that if you had a leak in your tire, it would take 50 years to see a one psi difference. this was enough to upset the apple cart in terms of the sensitivity of the seismometer. we had a limited amount of time to fix it. but the things we were trying to use to patch it, had to be able to withstand these huge temperature extremes. we finally realized we were not going to be able to do a competent job of patching this to be absolutely certain it would work on mars. we decided it was much more prudent to stop and not send something to mars that we were unsure of what step back and see whether we could do something about it. we went to nasa a few months later with a plan for fixing

this. and we had -- i think we put together a very solid plan for showing that we could fix it. that we could fix it in plenty -- test it tests its to the level that we would have no doubt about it once we got to the spacecraft. and between the solidity of that plan, and as jim said, the importance of the science that this mission was going to return, nasa made a decision to allow us to go forward. they watched us very carefully as you can imagine. they watched the progress of the seismometer to make sure we were meeting the milestones. we redesigned that vacuum system to make sure that not only was it as good as it was supposed to be before that that it had extra margin and extra ability to maintain that margin. >> and with that come a round of applause for our science panel. [applause]

ok, we are here for launch. to tell us more about the atlas 5-401 -- please welcome to the stage, two nasa steely eyed missile men. the launched rector of nassau's launch services program and the program manager from kfc. >> thank you, stephanie. tom brought this up earlier. who is excited? [applause] excitement over here? i know where the social media folks are so i'm going to focus on you guys. the professional media guys -- it takes them a lot to get excited. wow, that rocket over there -- this amazing spacecraft. we have got it all bundled up together. it is about two miles from here south up on the hill. vandaberg air force base. i live in florida. i get to come from california

for the first time ever and launch a mission to mars. this is thrilling. it takes us a lot to get excited but you can sense, within the launch team, all aspects of our launch team. even, it takes a lot to get folks in washington, d.c., nasa headquarters is even excited. as stephanie said, i am tim dunn and i am humbled and honored to be the launch director for this mission. i stand before you and represent a huge organization called nasa launch services program. lsp takes care of you the taxpayer. how do we do that? we match up requirements like this beautiful spacecraft that needs to go to mars with those

rockets like the mighty atlas five. what we do is we compete those requirements across the launch industry. in this case, united launch alliance. that gold standard rocket that you see a model of, that is a incredible capability we have. i am thrilled to be part of this team. i want to tell you about where we have come from in the recent history and what will happen less than two days from now. let us look at some video here. [video clip] there is the mighty atlas, first stage, on its way out to space launch complex three on the hill on south fandom berg. that is a quick sequence of the erection going into the launch. that is the isa, transition

structure that takes us from the first stage down to the second stage. and here is the second stage of an atlas five. this is called centaur. it has an rl10 engine on it. a incredible performing space vehicle. there is your second stage. going up we erected the first , and second stages back in march. just under two months ago we , were putting it all together. you can see the professionals from united launch alliance doing that. that is what it is all about right there. that is the spacecraft, insight, encapsulated in the metal bearing. the four meter bearing. this was monday, the 23rd of april. there we are. a beautiful shot of some of the art work there on the side of the payload. there is my video. that is what the rocket looks like inside the mobile service tower.

what have we been doing this week? this week we did an interview on , monday. we did a dress rehearsal on tuesday. the entire launch team with all agencies -- we are primed and ready. this morning we did the launch , readiness review. we got "go" from all the organizations that have a vested interest. we are go for launch. yes, we are. [applause] moving forward, tomorrow, is friday. so, may the "fourth" be with you. and what i told the launch team was -- may the fourth be with you during your crew stay and your rest day because we're all going to get rested up because it is an overnight launch. time.s our a tough one for the launch team

because you are working all night. we're going to try to get some rest. then, we have to get in on console. we are going to move that mobile service tower that surrounds it the atlas five right now. back that away around midnight tomorrow night first thing , saturday morning. then we're going to put all of the liquid oxygen and the hydrogen onboard. and then, if all has gone well and we have a good range and good weather, we will be set to go starting at 4:05. i want to turn it over to my good friend, scott messer, from united launch alliance. on behalf of united launch alliance, i want to welcome you to the insight launch. we at united launch alliance are super excited. maybe not as excited as tim but we are super excited to be part of this critical launch. united launch alliance -- we

have launched five times so far this year and we are expecting saturday morning's launch to be the 128th successful consecutive launch. this is a great vehicle. it is the 401. we have several different configurations. the atlas 401 has a four meter fairing at the top two protected and we get out of the atmosphere. it has got a four meter body. it does not have any solid rocket motors on it. the united launch alliance, out of the 128 launches we have had, 30's evan of those have been with the 401. this is by far the workhorse of our atlas family. almost all of our vehicles have launched this configuration

which has been a good vehicle for a spirit and for our customers. one of the questions that keeps coming up -- you might have heard that this is the first planetary launch from the west coast. and a lot of people keep asking -- why is that? in simple terms, nasa sent us a proposal a while back to launch in 2016. we went and looked at our manifests on the east coast and it was a little crowded. we felt like getting a vehicle out here would be a great idea. get it out of that congestion of the manifests. because this spacecraft was originally sized for a delta 2 and we were going to propose and launch on an atlas 401. we had plenty of performance to do that. we decided to propose that. nasa liked it. everybody is excited about it. it is exciting. we have a short video here that

going to you what is happen tomorrow morning, or salary -- sorry, saturday morning. if we could roll that video. [video clip] >> lift off of the united launch alliance, atlas five rocket. >> the main engine ignites. it generates more than 860,000 pounds of thrust to lift the rocket away from the pack. the atlas five reaches mach one, the speed of sound in one minute, 17 seconds. at four minutes the main engine , will then shut down. six seconds later, the atlas centaur separation system activates. the vehicle now weighs a little more than 7% of what it did at lift off. at four minutes 20 seconds, the centaur burn begins. at 13:16, the cutoff of the main

engine occurs. at nearly one hour and 15 minutes, the main engine is restarted or the second burn. -- for the second burn. approximately 4:49 seconds later, the cutoff occurs. at one hour, 28 minutes, centaur will then release nasa's aircraft on its journey to mars. it separates one hour 29 minutes into flight. >> it was mentioned earlier that there have been a lot of missions to mars. by our count, all of the missions that have gone to mars since 1960 have launched on a ula or a heritage vehicle. we are very proud of our history with the mars program. as i mentioned earlier, 100% of

our missions have been successful in the last 10 years. thrilled to be a part of this and offer that to our customers. to ourto say thank you mission partners, to nasa, the lucky martin, everyone for letting us be part of this wonderful and exciting mission. in conclusion, i will just say, go atlas -- go insight. >> i understand we have some social media questions. if we can get a microphone down front to jason. again, you can submit those online with the #asknasa. will be answering more online later and in launch commentary. jason? >> first question comes from a twitter user who is asking how much does nasa ordinate with the u.s. air force?

>> i will take that. we coordinate with our partners in the air force a lot. we have a terrific partnership on both ranges. here we are at the 30th space wing. incredible hosts. vandenberg air force base is a wonderful place. when working a mission at vandenberg, i probably meet at least weekly, normally weekly contact. you will hear from the wing commander in just a little bit. his team is amazing. the level of support they provide for both air force missions, obviously, but for other missions like the science missions and for commercial missions as well. there is a tremendous amount of coordination at my level, at the nasa headquarters level to the air force and pentagon level -- so, it is a great partnership. >> wonderful. a couple folks were asking --

what factors are determining the launch going from california instead of florida? and why aren't launches from the west coast to the planets as common as launches from the east coast? >> i can take that. when nasa puts out a request for a proposal, we make an effort to match the vehicle to the performance required of the spacecraft. as i mentioned, the insight spacecraft is smaller and easily fits into our atlas 401. one of the reasons we traditionally have launched interplanetary missions from the east coast is because when we do that, we get to take advantage of the rotation of the earth. and so, it is like jumping off of a rotating disk going in the direction the disc is going in so you get extra speed and it makes it a little easier. you do not have to have quite as large a vehicle or as much power.

in this case, because the atlas 401 had enough performance, we were able to do that off the west coast where we will go in the opposite direction initially. we will jump off the world in the opposite direction that it spins in. not get to take as much advantage of the rotation as the earth. that is why we are doing insight here because we have the performance. >> fantastic. any other questions here in the room? on the media side? we do have a social media question in the front. wait for a microphone. >> i am a public defender from philadelphia. i saw that marco a and marco b will be launching with the inside.

about them and what they add to the mission? >> we are going to have a segment about marco. any other questions? to my right. shannon is coming to you with the mic. >> is there -- if the insight mission, if the window -- if the launch goes beyond the mission window, is there a possibility of putting insight onto another rocket and launch from the east coast or even here? >> not until 26 months from now. that would be if we are not able to launch for some bad reason. we have 35 opportunities between saturday and june 8. that is a lot of chances to launch. in a really bad situation, we would have to wait for the next mars window. >> i would just add the atlas

, fire performance would indicate that we have a 95%-90 8% -- 98% probability of getting off in the next two days. >> i think we have one more question right down here. yes. >> redundant systems. this is what nasa is good at. i am with girls who code. will the data received be published openly? >> the science data from insight? i'm going to turn that back over to one of my scientists. most of the data will wind up in the public domain. bruce? >> all of the science data from nasa missions ends up in the public domain. i have signed a document saying that i do solemnly swear that

all of our data will be on the internet, in the interplanetary repository in less than six months after we acquire it. our goal is to once we get the , mission going is to push out , our science data and seismic data within a matter of weeks of acquisition. and the images that we get, we hope to get them on the internet within days of acquisition. the data is coming down from insight belongs to everybody. taxpayers of the the united states and to taxpayers in europe. it belongs to the whole world and we will push it out as fast as we can. >> all of these data are yours. and with that, thank you so much to tim and scott. a big round of applause for them. [applause] a lot of talk about the air force. we would not be lifting off this planet if it were not for the

30th a swing here at the vandenberg air force base. let us bring up two members. someone possibly with the coolest title in this roster and that is a high bar. colonel michael hoff, the space launch commander of the 30th space wing. and he is joined by first lieutenant christina williams, the weather officer. >> one, i appreciate you getting my name right. thanks for that. i am commander of the 30th space wing and i have been in this seat for close to a year. you have heard the term excitement. that is what we feel in supporting this launch. i tell you what, launches do not get old. they are fantastic. i am going to be inside on this launch. i will be sitting on console for

this and i hate that i won't be able to see it live. and i tell you, too, lieutenant williams will catch this in a second, i'm glad you have been able to see the visual of the launch. anybody who is been to the central coast california knows we get a pretty good marine layer. at least you can say that you saw a launch by looking at that video. i think we will have a marine layer coming out. >> yes, sir. >> our mission here is to support -- we help support these launches. we rely on the experts that you have heard from, from united launch alliance and nasa and other providers here on the western range. but our role, my role, is to operate this thing called the western range. tot i like and -- liken it is that we have these launch

providers come in and plug in your code. we provide the infrastructure, the communications, and the optics. we are also responsible for public safety and security. not only do i have a fantastic team of airmen out there who are doing the groundwork to make that connection with the communications and the power and all of that, but i also have defenders, my security forces, who sweep the area to keep it safe and secure. that is a little bit about me. how about over to you? >> thank you, sir. it is crazy to think that some people in here have been working on this launch for seven years. i have been working on it for two months. i am first lieutenant christina williams and i the launch am weather officer for the mission. i am originally from wisconsin. i have a degree in meteorology from the university of wisconsin, madison. i have been in the air force for

about three and a half years and that vandenberg for about five months. as a launch weather officer, my job will be to lead a 11 member launch weather team. we provide launch support. leading up to the launch and on the day of the launch. as the leader, we operate out of four locations on the day of launch. i will be working in the western range operation control center which is the main weather hub on the day of launch. my forecasters will be working out of our weather station where we typically do our daily -- day to day weather operations. i will also have my balloon editors and contractors releasing balloons and editing the data in our balloon shop and we will have observers at a site a mile away from the launchpad taking observations. three days leading up to the launch, we start sending out our forecasts.

yesterday, i sent out our minus three day forecast. tomorrow, i will be sending out our minus one day forecast. of whatde a description kind of whether we are expecting for lift off and probabilities of violations for range safety and user constraints. what these are are the likelihood that a certain constraint will be violated or exceeded. keep that in mind for later in the briefing. if we take a look at the current satellite, currently, we are ridge building- in with an upper-level trough west of the region moving towards us slowly. there is some shallow marine layer off the coast of california and there is fog overland as well. looking at our launch day

forecast, we are expecting wind out of the north at seven knots with temperatures in the low 50's. visibility is expected to be one half to one mile. for an overall probability of violation, we are expecting 80% due to the required range safety. all other mandatory range safety and launch agency constraints have a pov of 0%. for our scrub day forecast, we are expecting to see pressure moving out as that trough makes its way towards us. it will not affect the weather here too much. the winds will shift at a northwest increasing to 8-10 knots. temperature still in the low 50's with visibility at three quarters of a mile to one and a half miles. still not great.

requirede range safety probability constraint. i know 80%. that is a big number, right? mean we will not launch because of weather. you probably saw this morning that there is fog happening along the coast. it is a common event here, especially this time of year. nasa is aware of it and they are prepared to launch through it. the constraint is for safety but they do have ways to mitigate it. by assigning 80%, i am saying there is an 80% chance you will not be able to see the rocket launch at liftoff. this is all i have for weather. >> which is why i am glad you saw that video. before you crush my dreams, i am still going to hear it and feel it in my bones. >> even though we will be indoors, further away than a lot of folks looking at it, we will also feel it inside and that is a great thing. >> fantastic.

do we have any questions for our friends from the air force? can we get a mic on this side? >> since this is a historic mission from the west coast, could you talk about the economic impact to the central coast and will this bring a lot of jobs? >> i will not speak to the economic impact overall. this is the first time by the way i have stood up in front of a crowd and talked about a mission. this one has more importance than what we have done in the past. our first interplanetary launch from vandenberg air force base. to me, a launch is a launch is a launch. i care that it gets off the ground. because this is so his store it , has garnered a lot of

-- this is so his store, it has garnered a lot of attention and from that standpoint, there are a lot of people coming into view the launch. i don't have an answer for you as far as long-term. >> [indiscernible] >> this particular one? i would have to have our partners address that. i do not track that from a military standpoint. >> we are going to go to a reporter question on the phone line. aviation week, go ahead. >> i am a little confused by the launch violation forecast. are you saying -- do you have a number for what the probability of flying based on other factors not including weather people on the ground will be able to see it or not? >> if you're talking about visibility, we are anticipating visibility to be bad that day.

we expecting it to be one half to one statutory mile. there is a 80% chance we will have visibility that low end you will not be able to see the launch. however, for the launch to happen, we are anticipating for all other mandatory range safety and user constraints, that the probability of violation is 0%. as i said safety has the ability , to mitigate that constraint involving visibility. if they choose to do so, we may be able to not have to monitor that during the launch which means you will not be able to see the launch but the launch could still be successful and not be impacted by the weather. >> we have another question on this side of the house. if we could get a microphone? thank you. >> a point of clarification. we know there is a good chance that we will not see the launch anywhere around the launchpad.

the question for people throughout southern california, when it gets to the higher elevations, will it be seen? >> yes. we are anticipating this fog to be shallow. it is only about 200 feet to 600 feet above the pad. as soon as it reaches above that, if you are standing far enough away, you should be able to see the rocket. >> you recommend that people get up at 4:00 in the morning, it might be worth seeing, right? >> if you stand above 600 feet, it would be worth it. >> thank you. >> we have got another question right here in the front. >> another clarification on the visibility. what are some of the mitigations from a safety perspective to waive the constraint for visibility? >> we look to our launch partner.

we have a lot of things that monitor the rocket. if one of those things should fail, and we have to have visibility for safety, then the air force would say -- yes, now we have to have visibility. and now you would have an 80% chance of violation. there is nothing in the way of this launch. we are clean from that standpoint. if ula or nasa said we absolutely have to have visibility on this launch, we would listen to them and say, gotcha, and we would be at that point of 80%. there is nothing standing in the way of that now. >> thank you. a big round of applause for the 30th space wing. >> [indiscernible] >> as you saw in that video sight isin the show, in

not the only spacecraft set to launch on may 5. mars cube one, or marco. come on up, guys, because we another full-scale model, believe it or not. marcor insight later in 1. this is a tech demo. iee small size does not bely its giggles. >> i'm a system engineer. this is a full-sized replica of the marco spacecraft. it is significantly smaller than insight. u cube set. each satellite ways 30 pounds, but it is the size of a family

size cereal box. marco is a technology demonstration. this is the first opportunity to fly on an interplanetary trajectory. there are three main technologies that marco will demonstrate. one is a propulsion system on board for marco to do it's only trajectory correction. the propellant on board is the same liquid would find inside a fire extinguisher, and for those "wally,"seen the movie we have nicknamed that two marco spacecrafts wally and eva, marco a and b. the other technologies that are being demonstrated and developed is one is ajpl radio about the size of a

softball. it is designed to fit in a cube sat, but also be able to interface with a deep space network. that is a big deal because in interplanetary space, indications is a challenge that cubesats have not had to deal before. they are farther away from earth and they have to figure out how to range and determine the orbit of the cubesat. the radio enables name to do that. the high-gain antenna is a technology that was developed at jpl. you can see the circular pattern on here. when the radio sends a signal, it illuminates this panel. the single is focused just like it was coming out of a parabolic dish. but because it is flat like this in a small stow

flying, which is ideal for launching a cubesat in a box. there are solar panels. these deployed at the beginning. it generates 40 watts on earth, but only 17 watts near mars, and there is an intent on the bottom. it is a is successful, technology demonstration, so a lot of new things happening with it. but it is on a trajectory to mars. as it slides five, if everything and well -- slides by everything goes perfectly much antenna is designed to receive insightfrom insight as goes to its entry and land ing phase. ts that back to earth. i want to turn it over to andy to talk about the marco mission

and that cubesat paradigm. >> thank you. s too is the first cubesat go into interplanetary space, but they build on 20 years of cubesat experience. these missions have formed education, technological, scientific missions, and the growing capability. are flyingats kilometerss -- 800 above the surface. we are sending marco a significant distance, and this is why is a technology demonstration mission, because of all the things that need to the right along way, we need to be able to communicate, to navigate, to be able to maneuver in the deep space environment away from earth and dealing with light time delay and all the other issues we have in the deep

space environments. on saturday, he will launch with mission.ht 90 minutes after launch, once insight separates from the upper stage, that you marco satellites will detach. first, andl pop out it will slowly drift off. it will rotate 180 degrees and then deploy the marco b spacecraft. each will be flying out towards mars independent from insight or the following 6 1/2 months. in the early minutes, we will start to d to foist the solar panels. they will deploy off on the right hand side, followed by a burn on the left onset of the spacecraft. these are critical. after the solar panels are destroyed, he will begin check

out operations. the array will pop out first, and the next couple days, followed soon by the uhf antenna. each of these are critical, not only to provide us indications as we are going away from earth, but once we get near mars, to begin to support the insight primary spacecraft vision come in, it will send that data 70-meter dish.s we do not need to wait until mars tests out this releases. we will be working to do a relay closer to earth to to check out the system. spacecraft are a collaboration, not only from nasa jpl, but many other commercial and university, academic entities that are out there in order to pull this together. it is a collaboration of the entire cubesat community and

building on the effort that has and done the last 20 years that allows us to take the first s to deep space, and we look forward to riding along with insight. >> i was so excited getting your model out here. i failed to mention this is andy, the market should engineer from jpl. does anybody have questions for andy? cubesat questions? right in front, let's get you a microphone. you're the next mike runner on this show. right here in the front row. >> thank you. hi, i'm here with astro athens. i am wondering, sing the future with humans potentially colonizing mars, do you see this technology for satellites

for those living on mars since this is able to be able to pick up signals from the insight mission? >> are spacecraft are demonstrating what we might be able to use. small spacecraft are good at focused missions. they can do that one thing very well. we are excited to see how to get ability they grow, but everything we have that is so small usually just does one thing very well. >> ok, and we got another question there, and then we will take a couple of nasa questions. >> is such an exciting new technology. what is done next step for this technology if it is successful? , there are 13 cubesats of this size to better manifest on launch. about half of them are using the same radio technology that is

flying on marco. i am working on at least one of them. this technology is even before it flies is being used by future missions. >> ok, jason? on to nasa here, there is a question from a better user, will marcos used or monitored after they complete their flyby of mars? >> soon after the flyby, each of the spacecraft will attempt to rebroadcast the same data back down to earth within the first couple of weeks passed the mars flyby. we will be checking out the last -- the health of the marco spacecraft, and never will be the end of the primary mission for the marcos. >> we had one go back. i want to make sure we get our marco question in now that was earlier on the show. all right. any other questions? any other questions for marco,

small sats? all right, one in the back there. >> hi. could you talk about how marco orients itself using constellations? >> marco, like many different space draft out there -- spacecraft, uses a small telescope to look at the stars, identify how it is oriented with respect to those stars, and pass it on to the broader spacecraft. once we have the knowledge of how we are pointed, we use small spinning wheels on board along with this cold gas system in order to turn ourselves to where we would like to be oriented along the way. >> all right, and with that, thank you, marco team. [applause] so i know we had more nasa questions that we got turned the show. we will be answering some of those online on the various networks they came in on.

also we will be referring some of them to the subject matter experts in launch commentary. you can interact with the mission. online, directly, on social media. so just go to the handle @nasa insight on facebook and twitter, and you can get your questions answered. if you want to find out more, please visit the mission online .nasa.gov/insight. open saturday,ow may five. we will be live on nasa tv and the online simulcast at 3:30 which the launch expected pdt.rlier than 4:05