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PIA23043: InSight Seismometer's Wind and Thermal Shield Seen from Space
NASA's InSight spacecraft and its recently deployed Wind and Thermal Shield were imaged on Feb. 4, 2019, by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
 Target Name:  Mars
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) 
 Spacecraft:  Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
 Instrument:  HiRISE 
 Product Size:  969 x 777 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  University of Arizona/HiRISE-LPL 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA23043.tif (2.26 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA23043.jpg (190.4 kB)  

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

NASA's InSight spacecraft and its recently deployed Wind and Thermal Shield were imaged on Mars on Feb. 4, 2019, by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

On Feb. 2, 2019, InSight's robotic arm placed the special shield over its seismometer on the Martian surface to protect the instrument from wind and extreme temperatures. The green object in this image is the InSight lander; the white dot just below it is the shield, which is especially bright and reflective. The shield is a little less than 6 feet (1.8 meters) away from the lander. The dark circles on either side of the lander are its solar panels. The total width of the lander with both panels open is 19 feet, 8 inches (6 meters).

The image also shows the darkened ground where InSight's retrorockets blew away lighter-colored dust as the lander touched down on Nov. 26, 2018. Scientists are interested in imaging this location over time to watch how quickly the lighter-colored Martian dust covers that darkened surface.

The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colorado. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Image Addition Date:
2019-02-11