• Question: What has been the hardest instrument to make? How long did it take?

    Asked by LaylaMaeM to Tris on 18 Nov 2020.
    • Photo: Tris Warren

      Tris Warren answered on 18 Nov 2020:

      Hi LaylaMaeM – thanks for your question. I was lucky to be involved in a mission to Mars called InSight. The InSight missions main instrument was a seismometer. A seismometer is used to measure Earthquakes or in this case – Marsquakes! It was really tricky to build – because we had to build the seismometer so that it could survive a rocket launch and work at the temperatures expected on Mars. During testing, we had a number of failures which broke when we vibrated it in our lab using the expected rocket vibration. And some broke when we tested them at -65C (that’s as cold as we expected it to get on Mars). : | We actually missed our rocket launch date because the seismometer just wasn’t ready in time and we had to delay the mission by two years. But we did manage to get it working and landed on Mars in 2018. I spent a total of 4 years working on building the InSight seismometer, but I was working with people who had spent 10 years working it. Here is a video of the celebration from when it landed on Mars – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVzzgwVyH4Y

Comments

  • Photo: Stu

    Stu commented on :

    The one I’m building right now. Its a telescope used to shoot satellites with lasers… Ok, ok, they are communication lasers, but the task is the same. I can’t get the optics right so I have got a clever young female optics engineer to do it for me. Team work!

  • Photo: Roy

    Roy commented on :

    Take a look at this as an example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope
    This Telescope will replace the Hubble and be much better at taking images of distant stars, the development began in 1996 and the launch is planned for October 31st next year, I have colleagues who worked on the InfraRed Instruments MIRI and NIRSPEC and they finished those activities probably around 5 years ago or more. This is a very ambitious project and has really pushed Engineers and Scientists to develop new ideas and methods but that is the fun of the Space industry and when it launches there will be thousands of excited and nervous people around the world crossing their fingers for a good launch and insertion into its final orbit position.