@TWITTER.COM/EEEDITORMIKE E D ITO R’S N OTE MHOCKETT@EVALUATIONENGINEERING.COM Testing for Mars


On Nov. 26, NASA’s InSight Rover touched down on Mars, ending a seven-


month journey that took the craft 301,223,981 miles from Earth. I livestreamed NASA’s YouTube broadcast


from its Jet Propulsion Laboratory control room, where dozens of project members anxiously tracked their $830 million rover’s descent, landing, and confirmation of work- ing communications, celebrating a series of milestones along the way. And while the landing went perfectly, it


was only the first major milestone that will determine if InSight is successful. Just a few minutes after touchdown, In-


Sight (Interior Exploration using Seismic In- vestigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) sent its first image from the Martian surface. About six hours later, NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter confirmed that InSight’s solar arrays deployed correctly. Tis began a three-month deployment phase of InSight’s instruments as part of its two-year prime mission of burrow- ing a heat probe and performing a series of radio experiments to study the internal struc- ture and rotation of Mars. The engineering team began deploying InSight’s 5.9-foot-long robotic camera arm a couple days after land- ing, and the rover started collecting science data at about the same time. InSight’s main instruments—the Seismic


Experiment for Interior Structure and Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package—were set to deploy after this issue went to print. Insight’s landing got me thinking about just


how much testing it must take to develop a Mars rover and then pull off the feat of suc- cessfully landing it 300 million miles from Earth. Testing the rover’s basic motor func- tions is one thing, its instruments are another, and then the launch itself is a whole different challenge. All have zero room for error with almost a billion-dollar investment on the line. And I wonder how the nature of space—and more specifically, Mars-based electronic test & measurement procedures— compare with that found in other industries. I’m guess- ing much of it is the same, but surely, testing components that need to function away from


2 EVALUATION ENGINEERING JANUARY 2019


Earth require some different criteria than components that need to function in a lab in- strument rack here on Earth. I wonder how far in advance that testing


begins before a rover project, or any project that puts something into space. InSight was manufactured by Lockheed Martin and is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labora- tory (JPL), and most of Insight’s onboard payload instruments were built by European agencies. The testing process must take an extraordinary cooperative effort between all parties involved. Hopefully someday forEvaluation Engineer-


ing, I’ll have the opportunity to ask a Lock- heed Martin, JPL, or NASA project test engi- neer about that testing timeline and what’s involved. Where did Lockheed Martin get InSight’s semiconductors and sensors from? What kind of environmental testing was re- quired, and who performed that testing? What a ginormous financial and labor


waste it would be to send this craft like this to Mars and land it perfectly, only to find out a key instrument or component of its drill doesn’t function correctly due to something missed in the testing stage. InSight was origi- nally supposed to launch back in March of 2016, but a persistent vacuum failure in its seismometer caused it to miss its launch win- dow and delay it until May of 2018. Tat set- back added approximately $150 million to the total project cost. Insight follows three consecutive suc-


cessful Mars rover missions—Spirit (landed 2004); Opportunity (2004); and Curios- ity (2012). Before that, three of the first four rover missions were failures—Mars 2 (1971), Mars 3 (1971), and Beagle 2 (2003)— with 1997’s Sojourner (Mars Pathfinder) as the first successful mission. Congrats to Lockheed Martin, the JPL In-


Sight team, and everyone else involved on what has been achieved so far on this mis- sion, and best of luck the rest of the way.


EDITOR-IN-CHIEF


NUMBERSBY TH E 2.06 BILLION


October North American billings for semiconductor equipment suppliers worldwide


2% Increase for billings


year-to-year in October Source: SEMI


7.83 BILLION


Expected revenue of global multilayer ceramic capacitor market by 2024


5.5%


Predicted CAGR of global multilayer ceramic capacitor market from 2018 to 2024


Source: Allied Market Research


22.5 BILLION


Predicted global mobile artificial intelligence market size by 2024


28.8%


Anticipated CAGR during the forecast period


Source: reportbuyer.com


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