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Bruce Murray Space Image Library

Laser Retroreflector for InSight (LaRRI)

Laser Retroreflector for InSight (LaRRI)
Laser Retroreflector for InSight (LaRRI) The national space agency of Italy (ASI, for Agenzia Spaziale Italiana) provided LaRRI to be used by a possible future Mars orbiter mission with a laser altimeter making extremely precise measurements of the lander's location. Each of the eight reflectors uses three mutually perpendicular mirrors, joining at one point like an inner corner of a box. This gives it the property of returning any incoming light directly back toward its source. Apollo astronauts on the Moon placed larger arrays of similar "corner cube reflectors" at several lunar landing sites more than 45 years ago. NASA / JPL-Caltech