NASA suspends March launch of InSight mission to Mars

CHICAGO - NASA announced on Tuesday it has suspended the March 2016 launch of its InSight mission to Mars because of problems with a key scientific component. The next launch window will not occur until around May 2018 and the US space agency said it does not yet know if it will be able to continue with the mission given budget constraints. "We either decide to go forward, or we don't, and that depends on cost data," John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, told reporters. "I don't think anyone has a question that in 26 months we won't be able to solve the problem." It will take weeks, if not months, before NASA knows how much this delay will cost, and whether it will be able to come up with the funding to move forward with InSight. The mission has a total cost cap of $675 million and it has already spent $525 million. The InSight lander -- which stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport -- was set to delve deep beneath the Red Planet's surface in order to discover how the solar system's rocky planets formed. "Learning about the interior structure of Mars has been a high priority objective for planetary scientists since the Viking era," Grunsfeld said. "We push the boundaries of space technology with our missions to enable science, but space exploration is unforgiving, and the bottom line is that we're not ready to launch in the 2016 window."   AFP