Image above: Expedition 68 Flight Engineer and NASA spacewalker Josh Cassada rides the Canadarm2 robotic arm to prepare a roll-out solar array for its deployment on the International Space Station's Port-4 truss segment. Image Credit: NASA TV.
Expedition 68 Flight Engineers Josh Cassada and Frank Rubio of NASA concluded their spacewalk at 3:27 p.m. EST after 7 hours and 8 minutes.
Cassada and Rubio completed their major objectives for today to install an International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA) on the 4A power channel on the port truss. The iROSAs will increase power generation capability by up to 30%, increasing the station’s total available power from 160 kilowatts to up to 215 kilowatts.
Image above: NASA spacewalker Josh Cassada prepares the station’s fourth roll-out solar array for its installation and deployment as the orbiting lab flew above the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Namibia. Image Credit: NASA TV.
It was the 257th spacewalk in support of space station assembly, upgrades, and maintenance, and was the third spacewalk for both astronauts.
Cassada and Rubio are in the midst of a planned six-month science mission living and working aboard the microgravity laboratory to advance scientific knowledge and demonstrate new technologies for future human and robotic exploration missions, including lunar missions through NASA’s Artemis program.
Image above: Expedition 68 Flight Engineer and NASA spacewalker Josh Cassada prepares a roll-out solar array for its deployment on the International Space Station's Port-4 truss segment as the orbiting lab flew 264 miles above the Indian Ocean off the coast of South Africa. Image Credit: NASA TV.
While Thursday’s spacewalk was underway, NASA Space Station Program Manager Joel Montalbano and Roscosmos Human Spaceflight Executive Director Sergei Krikalev participated in an audio-only media teleconference. The two space executives discussed the ongoing investigation of an external leak detected on the Soyuz MS-22 crew ship. Ground teams continue to assess data and options for the safe return of crew to Earth.
NEO Surveyor is the first purpose-built space telescope that will advance NASA’s planetary defense efforts by finding and tracking hazardous near-Earth objects.
Image above: NASA’s NEO Surveyor is seen in this illustration against an infrared observation of a starfield made by the agency’s WISE mission. More than 100 asteroids can be seen as red dots, with some of them visible in a track that shows how they were captured at different times as they marched across the sky. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona.
A space telescope designed to search for the hardest-to-find asteroids and comets that stray into Earth’s orbital neighborhood, NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor (NEO Surveyor) recently passed a rigorous technical and programmatic review. Now the mission is transitioning into the final design-and-fabrication phase and establishing its technical, cost, and schedule baseline.
The mission supports the objectives of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The NASA Authorization Act of 2005 directed NASA to discover and characterize at least 90% of the near-Earth objects more than 140 meters (460 feet) across that come within 30 million miles (48 million kilometers) of our planet’s orbit. Objects of this size are capable of causing significant regional damage, or worse, should they impact the Earth.
“NEO Surveyor represents the next generation for NASA’s ability to quickly detect, track, and characterize potentially hazardous near-Earth objects,” said Lindley Johnson, NASA’s Planetary Defense Officer at PDCO. “Ground-based telescopes remain essential for us to continually watch the skies, but a space-based infrared observatory is the ultimate high ground that will enable NASA’s planetary defense strategy.”
Find Them First
Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, NEO Surveyor will journey a million miles to a region of gravitational stability – called the L1 Lagrange point – between Earth and the Sun, where the spacecraft will orbit during its five-year primary mission.
From this location, the NEO Surveyor will view the solar system in infrared wavelengths – light that is invisible to the human eye. Because those wavelengths are mostly blocked by Earth’s atmosphere, larger ground-based observatories may miss near-Earth objects that this space telescope will be able to spot by using its modest light-collecting aperture of nearly 20 inches (50 centimeters).
NEO Surveyor’s cutting-edge detectors are designed to observe two heat-sensitive infrared bands that were chosen specifically so the spacecraft can track the most challenging-to-find near-Earth objects, such as dark asteroids and comets that don’t reflect much visible light. In the infrared wavelengths to which NEO Surveyor is sensitive, these objects glow because they are heated by sunlight.
In addition, NEO Surveyor will be able to find asteroids that approach Earth from the direction of the Sun, as well as those that lead and trail our planet’s orbit, where they are typically obscured by the glare of sunlight – objects known as Earth Trojans.
“For the first time in our planet’s history, Earth’s inhabitants are developing methods to protect Earth by deflecting hazardous asteroids,” said Amy Mainzer, the mission’s survey director at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “But before we can deflect them, we first need to find them. NEO Surveyor will be a game-changer in that effort.”
The mission will also help to characterize the composition, shape, rotation, and orbit of near-Earth objects. While the mission’s primary focus is on planetary defense, this information can be used to better understand the origins and evolution of asteroids and comets, which formed the ancient building blocks of our solar system.
When it launches, NEO Surveyor will build upon the successes of its predecessor, the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE). Repurposed from the WISE space telescope after that mission ended in 2011, NEOWISE proved highly effective at detecting and characterizing near-Earth objects, but NEO Surveyor is the first space mission built specifically to find large numbers of these hazardous asteroids and comets.
Already in the Works
After the mission passed this milestone on Nov. 29, key instrument development got under way. For instance, the large radiators that will allow the system to be passively cooled are being fabricated. To detect the faint infrared glow of asteroids and comets, the instrument’s infrared detectors need to be much cooler than the spacecraft’s electronics. The radiators will perform that important task, eliminating the need for complex active cooling systems.
Additionally, construction of the composite struts that will separate the telescope’s instrumentation from the spacecraft has begun. Designed to be poor heat conductors, the struts will isolate the cold instrument from the warm spacecraft and sunshield, the latter of which will block sunlight that might otherwise obscure the telescope’s view of near-Earth objects and heat up the instrument.
Progress has also been made developing the instrument’s infrared detectors, beam splitters, filters, electronics, and enclosure. And work has begun on the space telescope’s mirror, which will be formed from a solid block of aluminum and shaped by a custom-built diamond-turning machine.
“The project team, including all of our institutional and industrial collaborators, is already very busy designing and fabricating components that will ultimately become flight hardware,” said Tom Hoffman, NEO Surveyor project manager at JPL. “As the mission enters this new phase, we’re excited to be working on this unique space telescope and are already looking forward to our launch and the start of our important mission.”
More About the Mission
The mission is tasked by NASA’s Planetary Science Division within the Science Mission Directorate; program oversight is provided by the PDCO, which was established in 2016 to manage the agency’s ongoing efforts in planetary defense. NASA’s Planetary Missions Program Office at Marshall Space Flight Center provides program management for NEO Surveyor.
The project is being developed by JPL and is led by survey director Amy Mainzer at the University of Arizona. Established aerospace and engineering companies have been contracted to build the spacecraft and its instrumentation, including Ball Aerospace , Space Dynamics Laboratory, and Teledyne. The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder will support operations, and IPAC-Caltech in Pasadena, California, is responsible for processing survey data and producing the mission’s data products. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
More information about NEO Surveyor is available at:
This beautifully crisp icy scene with a swirling ribbon of rusty red and white striped terrain connecting two large craters wraps up the year on Mars.
Perspective view into icy layered crater
The High Resolution Stereo Imaging camera on board ESA’s Mars Express captured this frosty scene in the Ultimi Scopuli region near the south pole of Mars on 19 May 2022. While it may look like a winter wonderland, it was southern hemisphere spring at the time and ice was starting to retreat. Dark dunes are peeking through the frost and elevated terrain appears ice-free.
Two large impact craters draw the eye, their interiors striped with alternating layers of water-ice and fine sediments. These ‘polar layered deposits’ are also exposed in exquisite detail in the rusty red ridge that connects the two craters.
Perspective view along icy layered ridge
Frosty dunes
All over the image, dark dunes and dune fields can be found, in some areas covered by a thin frost layer. The dune fields take on a ‘yardang’-like shape, creating sharp ridges running parallel to the prevalent wind direction, guided by the morphology of the underlying surface. The dark dust is thought to originate from ancient, buried layers of volcanically erupted material. It can be found all over Mars and is easily spread by strong winds.
Topography of Ultimi Scopuli
Carbon dioxide jets
Individual dark spots hint at a process specific to polar areas on Mars. Jets of carbon dioxide generated by the sublimation of ice into gas have burst through ice layers, ejecting a geyser-like fountain of dark dust that settles into these circular splotches. Monitoring these zones from orbit shows the processes that steadily alter the appearance of the surface in the polar regions on Mars.
Ice scoop
Mars Express
All over the image numerous large irregular-shaped sublimation features can be found arising from thawing pockets of ice. They have the appearance of (albeit empty) terrestrial lakes that have been scooped out of the landscape. A very pronounced example can be seen at the upper left image border of the main colour image.
Clouds
Hazy clouds – especially in the central part of the image – complete the atmospheric feel of the scene. Clouds in the south polar region often contain water ice and their trajectory is partly influenced by the topography of the terrain.
Ultimi Scopuli in context
During the seasonal cycle, carbon dioxide ice is deposited at the poles in winter, which sublimates in the springtime. Between 12 to 16% of the planet’s atmosphere is deposited in the poles during winter, with the release of gas the following spring boosting the atmospheric pressure and generating strong winds. This ongoing process creates a huge exchange of material between surface and atmosphere throughout the martian year.
Happy New Year, Mars!
The new Mars year (Year 37 according to the way Mars years are counted) begins on 26 December this year, just one day after the 19th anniversary of Mars Express’ arrival at Mars – a double celebration for Mars fans this festive season!
Ultimi Scopuli in 3D
Exploring Mars
Mars Express has been orbiting the Red Planet since 2003, imaging Mars’ surface, mapping its minerals, identifying the composition and circulation of its tenuous atmosphere, probing beneath its crust, and exploring how various phenomena interact in the martian environment.
The High Resolution Stereo Camera HRSC was developed and is operated by the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR).
Filled with rock, the sample tube will be one of 10 forming a depot of tubes that could be considered for a journey to Earth by the Mars Sample Return campaign.
Image above: NASA’s Perseverance rover deposited the first of several samples onto the Martian surface on Dec. 21, 2022, the 653rd Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.
A titanium tube containing a rock sample is resting on the Red Planet’s surface after being placed there on Dec. 21 by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. Over the next two months, the rover will deposit a total of 10 tubes at the location, called “Three Forks,” building humanity’s first sample depot on another planet. The depot marks a historic early step in the Mars Sample Return campaign.
Perseverance has been taking duplicate samples from rock targets the mission selects. The rover currently has the other 17 samples (including one atmospheric sample) taken so far in its belly. Based on the architecture of the Mars Sample Return campaign, the rover would deliver samples to a future robotic lander. The lander would, in turn, use a robotic arm to place the samples in a containment capsule aboard a small rocket that would blast off to Mars orbit, where another spacecraft would capture the sample container and return it safely to Earth.
The depot will serve as a backup if Perseverance can’t deliver its samples. In that case, a pair of Sample Recovery Helicopters would be called upon to finish the job.
Image above: Once the Perseverance team confirmed the first sample tube was on the surface, they positioned the WATSON camera located at the end of the rover’s robotic arm to peer beneath the rover, checking to be sure that the tube hadn’t rolled into the path of the wheels. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.
The first sample to drop was a chalk-size core of igneous rock informally named “Malay,” which was collected on Jan. 31, 2022, in a region of Mars’ Jezero Crater called “South Séítah.” Perseverance’s complex Sampling and Caching System took almost an hour to retrieve the metal tube from inside the rover’s belly, view it one last time with its internal CacheCam, and drop the sample roughly 3 feet (89 centimeters) onto a carefully selected patch of Martian surface.
But the job wasn’t done for engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which built Perseverance and leads the mission. Once they confirmed the tube had dropped, the team positioned the WATSON camera located at the end of Perseverance’s 7-foot-long (2-meter-long) robotic arm to peer beneath the rover, checking to be sure that the tube hadn’t rolled into the path of the rover’s wheels.
Testing a Sample Drop in the Mars Yard
Video above: Engineers use OPTIMISM, a full-size replica of NASA’s Perseverance rover, to test how it will deposit its first sample tube on the Martian surface. The test was conducted in the Mars Yard at JPL. Video Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
They also wanted to ensure the tube hadn’t landed in such a way that it was standing on its end (each tube has a flat end piece called a “glove” to make it easier to be picked up by future missions). That occurred less than 5% of the time during testing with Perseverance’s Earthly twin in JPL’s Mars Yard. In case it does happen on Mars, the mission has written a series of commands for Perseverance to carefully knock the tube over with part of the turret at the end of its robotic arm.
In coming weeks, they’ll have other opportunities to see whether Perseverance needs to use the technique as the rover deposits more samples at the Three Forks cache.
OPTIMISM Sticks the Landing
Video above: Engineers react with surprise while testing how NASA’s Perseverance rover will deposit its sample tubes on the Martian surface. Less than 5% of the time, a flat end on the surface tube caused it to land straight up after dropping. Video Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
“Seeing our first sample on the ground is a great capstone to our prime mission period, which ends on Jan. 6,” said Rick Welch, Perseverance’s deputy project manager at JPL. “It’s a nice alignment that, just as we’re starting our cache, we’re also closing this first chapter of the mission.”
More About the Mission
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
Mars Sample Return: Bringing Mars Rock Samples Back to Earth
Video above: This short animation features key moments of NASA and ESA’s Mars Sample Return campaign, from landing on Mars and securing the sample tubes to launching them off the surface and ferrying them back to Earth. Video Credits: NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC/MSFC.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
While flight control teams were preparing for today’s U.S. spacewalk, updated tracking data on a fragment of Russian Fregat-SB upper stage debris showed a close approach to station. Based on this new data, flight control teams directed the crew to stop spacewalk preparations as the ground team stepped into procedures to perform a Pre-Determined Debris Avoidance Maneuver (PDAM.)
The maneuver will use the Roscosmos Progress 81 thrusters to provide the complex an extra measure of distance away from the predicted track of the debris. Thruster firing is targeted to occur at 8:42 a.m. EST. The crew is not in any immediate danger.
Image above: Astronaut Josh Cassada is pictured during a spacewalk on Nov. 15, 2022, to ready the space station for future rollout solar array installation work. Image Credit: NASA.
Without the maneuver, it is predicted that the fragment could pass within less than a quarter mile from the station.
NASA managers will assess the next possible opportunity to perform the day’s planned spacewalk to install a new set of roll-out solar arrays to augment the station’s power capabilities.
Space Station Maneuvers to Avoid Debris After Conjunction Postpones Spacewalk
The International Space Station conducted a Pre-Determined Debris Avoidance Maneuver (PDAM) today, Dec. 21, at 8:42 a.m. EST. The decision to conduct the maneuver was based on tracking data that showed a close approach to station of a fragment of Russian Fregat-SB upper stage debris.
Image above: The space station was pictured from the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour during its departure on Nov. 8, 2021. Image Credit: NASA.
During the manuever, the Roscosmos Progress 81 thrusters fired for 10 minutes, 21 seconds to provide the complex an extra measure of distance away from the predicted track of the debris. Without the maneuver, it was estimated that the debris could have passed less than a quarter of a mile from the station.
The decision to conduct the maneuver earlier this morning resulted in a postponement of today’s planned spacewalk by NASA astronauts Frank Rubio and Josh Cassada. The crew was never in any immediate danger.
Spacewalk Postponed to Thursday, Managers Discuss Soyuz Leak Inquiry
NASA astronauts Frank Rubio and Josh Cassada are now scheduled to begin a spacewalk at 8:30 a.m. EST Thursday to augment the International Space Station’s power generation system. Wednesday’s spacewalk was postponed for 24 hours so that the orbiting lab’s ISS Progress 81 cargo craft could fire its engines at 8:42 a.m. to maneuver the station and avoid an approaching piece of rocket debris.
Image above: NASA astronauts (from left) Frank Rubio and Josh Cassada will conduct their third spacewalk together and install the space station’s fourth roll-out solar array. Image Credit: NASA.
Spacewalkers Rubio and Cassada will install another roll-out solar array, also known as an International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA), on the space station’s truss structure. This time the duo will maneuver to the opposite side of the station and install the fourth iROSA on the Port-4 truss structure. The external installation job will last about seven hours and broadcast live on NASA TV on the agency’s app and its website.
Expedition 68 Flight Engineers Nicole Mann of NASA and Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will operate the Canadarm2 robotic arm to support the spacewalkers during the fine-tuned iROSA installation job. The duo will also assist Rubio and Cassada in and out of their spacesuits, also known as Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMUs), in the Quest airlock before and after their spacewalk.
Image above: (Dec. 3, 2022) --- The International Space Station was orbiting 271 miles above the southern Pacific Ocean when NASA astronaut and Expedition 68 Flight Engineer Josh Cassada captured this photograph of the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module, the Prichal docking module, and the Soyuz MS-22 crew ship during a spacewalk. Image Credit: NASA.
While Thursday’s spacewalk is under way, NASA space station program manager Joel Montalbano and Roscosmos human spaceflight executive director Sergei Krikalev will hold an audio-only media teleconference 11 a.m. The two space executives will discuss the ongoing investigation of an external leak detected on the Soyuz MS-22 crew ship on a live audio call streaming on NASA’s website at https://www.nasa.gov/live.
The three cosmonauts representing Expedition 68, Commander Sergey Prokopyev and Flight Engineers Dmitri Petelin and Anna Kikina, stayed focused on lab maintenance servicing and cleaning a variety station hardware today.
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Российский грузовой корабль увел МКС от столкновения с космическим мусором / Russian cargo ship steered the ISS away from space debris https://www.roscosmos.ru/38650/
NASA / ESA / CSA-ASC - James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) patch.
Dec 21, 2022
By taking a closer look at one of Webb’s first images, the iconic Cosmic Cliffs, scientists have found dozens of energetic jets and outflows from young stars previously hidden by dust clouds. The discovery marks the beginning of a new era of investigating how stars like our Sun form, and how the radiation from nearby massive stars might affect the development of planets.
The two dozen previously unknown outflows from extremely young stars were found by analyzing data from a specific wavelength of infrared light (4.7 microns). Webb’s observations uncovered a gallery of objects ranging from small fountains to burbling behemoths that extend light-years from the forming stars.
NASA’s InSight mission has ended after more than four years of collecting unique science on Mars.
Image above: An image of the final selfie taken by NASA's InSight Mars lander on April 24, 2022, the 1,211th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The lander is covered with far more dust than it was in its first selfie, taken in December 2018, not long after landing – or in its second selfie, composed of images taken in March and April 2019. Because InSight's dusty solar panels are producing less power, the team will soon put the lander's robotic arm in its resting position (called the "retirement pose") for the last time in May of 2022. Image Credit: NASA.
Mission controllers at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California were unable to contact the lander after two consecutive attempts, leading them to conclude the spacecraft’s solar-powered batteries have run out of energy – a state engineers refer to as “dead bus.”
NASA had previously decided to declare the mission over if the lander missed two communication attempts. The agency will continue to listen for a signal from the lander, just in case, but hearing from it at this point is considered unlikely. The last time InSight communicated with Earth was Dec. 15.
“I watched the launch and landing of this mission, and while saying goodbye to a spacecraft is always sad, the fascinating science InSight conducted is cause for celebration,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “The seismic data alone from this Discovery Program mission offers tremendous insights not just into Mars but other rocky bodies, including Earth.”
InSight’s Final Selfie and Last Images
Short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, InSight set out to study the deep interior of Mars. The lander data has yielded details about Mars’ interior layers, the surprisingly strong remnants beneath the surface of its extinct magnetic dynamo, weather on this part of Mars, and lots of quake activity.
Its highly sensitive seismometer, along with daily monitoring performed by the French space agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and the Marsquake Service managed by ETH Zurich, detected 1,319 marsquakes, including quakes caused by meteoroid impacts, the largest of which unearthed boulder-size chunks of ice late last year.
Such impacts help scientists determine the age of the planet’s surface, and data from the seismometer provides scientists a way to study the planet’s crust, mantle, and core.
“With InSight, seismology was the focus of a mission beyond Earth for the first time since the Apollo missions, when astronauts brought seismometers to the Moon,” said Philippe Lognonné of Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, principal investigator of InSight’s seismometer. “We broke new ground, and our science team can be proud of all that we’ve learned along the way.”
The seismometer was the last science instrument that remained powered on as dust accumulating on the lander’s solar panels gradually reduced its energy, a process that began before NASA extended the mission earlier this year.
“InSight has more than lived up to its name. As a scientist who’s spent a career studying Mars, it’s been a thrill to see what the lander has achieved, thanks to an entire team of people across the globe who helped make this mission a success,” said Laurie Leshin, director of JPL, which manages the mission. “Yes, it’s sad to say goodbye, but InSight’s legacy will live on, informing and inspiring.”
All Mars missions face challenges, and InSight was no different. The lander featured a self-hammering spike – nicknamed “the mole” – that was intended to dig 16 feet (5 meters) down, trailing a sensor-laden tether that would measure heat within the planet, enabling scientists to calculate how much energy was left over from Mars’ formation.
Designed for the loose, sandy soil seen on other missions, the mole could not gain traction in the unexpectedly clumpy soil around InSight. The instrument, which was provided by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), eventually buried its 16-inch (40-centimeter) probe just slightly below the surface, collecting valuable data on the physical and thermal properties of the Martian soil along the way. This is useful for any future human or robotic missions that attempt to dig underground.
The mission buried the mole to the extent possible thanks to engineers at JPL and DLR using the lander’s robotic arm in inventive ways. Primarily intended to set science instruments on the Martian surface, the arm and its small scoop also helped remove dust from InSight’s solar panels as power began to diminish. Counterintuitively, the mission determined they could sprinkle dirt from the scoop onto the panels during windy days, allowing the falling granules to gently sweep dust off the panels.
“We’ve thought of InSight as our friend and colleague on Mars for the past four years, so it’s hard to say goodbye,” said Bruce Banerdt of JPL, the mission’s principal investigator. “But it has earned its richly deserved retirement.”
JPL manages InSight for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA’s Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supports spacecraft operations for the mission.
Several European partners, including France’s CNES and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors.
