March 21, 2018
NASA’s Mars InSight mission — short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport — is a historic first effort for scientists and engineers to learn more about the interior of the Red Planet, including its crust, mantle and core. Launching on May 5, 2018, NASA hopes the lander will reach the Martian surface by late November.
Drew Penrod, M.S. ASE 2017, a NASA-JPL systems engineer for the InSight mission, took the time to answer a few questions about his experience working on the mission so far.
Can you describe the goals of the InSight Mission? What kind of spacecraft will you be sending to the Martian surface?
It’s a lander — stationary by design — so that it can send out the geological instruments that we have on board once it has been deployed on the surface of Mars. All the science instruments that we have on board are used to measure geological data, including a seismometer to monitor for marsquakes, a heat flow probe to measure activity in the planet’s core and an instrument to measure the surface weather.
If we can better understand the formation of the inner planets, it not only gives us a better sense of how Mars formed, but also how Earth formed. That can give us a lot of information about our planet’s unique role in the universe as well as other solar systems that might be similar to ours. From there, we can potentially look for signs of other habitable planets that share characteristics to Earth.
Tell us about your role in this mission.
I’m a systems engineer on the instrument deployment team, so after we land on the surface of Mars, my job is basically making sure the seismic instruments get off of the spacecraft deck and onto the surface of Mars so they start recording data. We do a lot of testing to make sure all of the sequences work so that we don’t have any unexpected events after we actually land.
How did your education at UT Austin help prepare you for the work you’re doing on the InSight Mission?
It was a lot of exposure to all sorts of different techniques. I have a better understanding of the mission plan, how everything comes together, all of the tools that we use to plan the mission and to prepare for instrument deployment from my education at UT. It really helped me understand the architecture behind missions and behind mission tools better than before I was a student there.
Are other ASE/EM alumni working on this mission with you?
Yes, I’m working with a couple of other UT ASE/EM alumni on this particular project: Travis Imken is a Deployment Systems Engineer and Ravi Prakash will be coordinating the Tactical Downlink Coordinator after landing.
What are you most excited about for this mission?
I’m excited about a lot of it. This is my first mission here at JPL so it will be really cool to go through the entire launch and landing process. We’ve been working on an operations readiness test recently, which means we’re practicing what’s going to happen during the first four days after we land on Mars. It’s been really great to see and participate in that process.
An artist's rendition of the InSight lander operating on the surface of Mars. Credit NASA
