HP3 – Experiment on InSight Mission Wrap-up Operations on Mars

Abstract

HP3 – the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package – is an experiment package on-board the NASA Mars Mission InSight (Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigation, Geodesy, and Heat Transport) to investigate the interior structure of Mars. InSight waslaunched on May 5th, 2018, landed successfully on Mars on November 26th, 2018, and is now operating successfully for more than one Martian year. The main science experiments of the InSight mission are a seismometer (SEIS), the HP3 heat flow probe and the Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment (RISE). An Auxciliary Payload Sensor Suite (APSS) consisting of atmospheric pressure, wind and temperature sensors as well as a magnetometer complement the payload. After landing on Mars the seismometer and HP3 were deployed to the Martian surface by the robotic arm of the lander. HP3 is the contribution of DLR (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V., Germany) to the InSight mission. It is designed to determine the geothermal heat flux by emplacing a suit of temperature sensors to a maximum depth of 5 m, by means of a mechanical hammering mechanism. HP3 is designed to measure the thermal conductivity as function of depth during the hammering phase, and to monitor the thermal profile of the subsurface for a full Martian year.