NASA's InSight Mars Lander Launches to Probe Red Planet's Deep Interior

This just took off

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InSight is the first interplanetary mission ever to launch from the West Coast and NASA's first Mars surface craft to lift off since the Curiosity rover started its deep-space journey in November 2011

If everything goes according to plan, InSight will reach its destination in a little less than seven months, touching down Nov. 26 on a nice, flat plain just north of the Martian equator. After a series of checkouts, the stationary lander will then begin a mission unlike any ever undertaken in the annals of planetary exploration.

InSight "will probe the interior of another terrestrial planet, giving us an idea of the size of the core, the mantle, the crust — and our ability then to compare that with the Earth," NASA Chief Scientist Jim Green said during a prelaunch news conference on Thursday (May 3). "This is of fundamental importance for us to understand the origin of our solar system and how it became the way it is today."

Two briefcase-size satellites also hitched a ride on this morning's launch and will make their own way to Mars, in an attempt to become the first-ever interplanetary "cubesats."


InSight





InSight is a robotic Mars lander designed to study the interior and subsurface of Mars, which would in turn help scientists to understand the Earth and Solar System history.[9][10] The mission launched on 5 May 2018 and is expected to land on the surface of Mars in November 2018,[11] where it will deploy a seismometer and burrow a heat probe. It will also perform a radio science experiment to study the internal structure of Mars.[12]