Hey, all. InSight is currently scheduled to launch on 5 May/1100 GMT. This thread is for discussion of that event, and this new subform is for all new mission-related topics.

GO INSIGHT!!!

For those who might watch and aren't aware, in a nutshell, the rocket will begin by heading south, parallel to the coast, towards Baja California. As a Northern Californian, this is contrary to my convenience, but if anyone has the freedom to watch it, you have my envy.

Its countdown live (as of May 5 , 2018), its mission (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport).

John Moore

LIFTOFF!

SECO 1. She's in orbit.

I have a question about EDL of InSight:
Will be a live feed directly from the Insight spacecraft during EDL (via tones like on other landers) or just we have the two cubesats for sending information about landing events ?

Robert

I'm trying to remember the Phoenix EDL details, and IIRC it was pretty much just tones, and of course InSight is using the same bus. As you pointed out, however, those cubesats this time should relay much more detailed information so hopefully we might have a data-rich descent similar in some ways to that of Curiosity.

Icing on the cake would be if MRO can image the descent chute on the way down as it did with Phoenix and Curiosity.

Escape burn complete. 9 min till spacecraft separation.

Spacecraft separation!

First cubesat deployed...second one as well!

Got three birds inbound to Mars.

Looks like DSN AOS starting now... NASA administrator talking now...

Live transmition ended. Signals from InSight received. All is well.

Congratulations to the Insight and Atlas teams for a successful launch.

Did they receive telemetry also from the MarCo cubesats ?
I dont see they have contact on DSN Now.

Black hole accretion disk / launch of InSight seen from the air.

Just found this-
They await first signals from the cubesats around 19h UT today - see here
https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/05/03/av-07...-status-center/

Is this live video from InSight spacecraft? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YCKwf3I5Lw
Does this mean it's still in earth orbit?

That stream looks like a clone of NASA TV. I presume the view is from the ISS.

They did.
The first signal was received at 12:15 p.m. PST (3:15 p.m. EST) today (May 5th); the second at 1:58 p.m. PST (4:58 p.m. EST).
"Both MarCO-A and B say 'Polo!' It's a sign that the little sats are alive and well,"
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7115

For Phoenix, Mars Odyssey was in position to do a "bent-pipe" relay in near-real-time. It was packet telemetry, not just tones, at something like 8kbit/s. One of the other orbiters (must have been MRO) was also recording everything in "canister" mode, which is more raw and better for forensics if they had a problem on landing. Phoenix also broadcasted tones direct to Earth.