Field not found.

MARS: THE INSIGHT MISSION HAS TAKEN OFF, WITH THE ITALIAN LARRI SYSTEM ALSO ON BOARD

9 May 2018

InSight Launch 2018 On 5 May, at 04:05 California time (13:05 in Italy), the Martian lander, InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport), was successfully launched from the Vandenberg base in America, to start its NASA mission to Mars. Equipment on board the lander included LaRRI (Laser Retro-Reflector for InSight), a laser microreflector developed by INFN with the support of the Italian Space Agency (ASI). The task of the InSight mission is to explore the depths of the Red Planet, to understand how rocky planets, such as the Earth, are formed. The instruments on board include a seismometer to detect Martian earthquakes, a probe for monitoring the heat flow from inside the planet and, of course, the LaRRI microreflector, which is an instrument designed and constructed by the SCF_Lab research group from the INFN National Laboratories in Frascati, in a joint programme with ASI-Matera, dedicated to geodetic measurement. Using new satellites in orbit around Mars, the Italian laser microreflectors will provide the precise position of the landers and rovers during their exploration, forming a network of Martian geodetic reference points, a test of Einstein’s general relativity complementing the lunar one carried out with the Apollo reflectors (measured by ASI-Matera) and a decidedly better definition of the 0 Meridian of Mars (a kind of “Mars Greenwich”).

You might also be interested in

Asimmetrie: The new issue is dedicated to the constants of physics

ALICE measures the conversion of lead into gold using Italian calorimeters

Laura Zani, INFN researcher at the Roma 3 Section and winner of the Young Experimental Physicist Prize 2025

Young Experimental Physicist Prize 2025 awarded to INFN researcher Laura Zani

Immagine: MEG II ©PSI

In search of new physics: MEG II updates its record

PADME experiment_Frascati National Laboratories_INFN

New results from the Padme experiment in the search for the X17 particle

Hot aisle of the machine room at the INFN Turin computing center.

Computing Technologies for the Einstein Telescope: CTLAB4ET Laboratory inaugurated in Turin