NASA's InSight Lander To Study Depths Of Red Planet
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MIAMI (CBSMiami) -- NASA is going back to Mars. InSight will be on the first-ever mission to study the heart of the Red Planet.
InSight is scheduled to launch Saturday, May 5 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on an Atlas V 401 rocket. The launch window opens at 4:05 a.m. PT (7:05 a.m. ET).
Launching on the same rocket is a separate NASA technology experiment known as Mars Cube One (MarCO). MarCO consists of two mini-spacecraft and will be the first test of CubeSat technology in deep space. They are designed to test new communications and navigation capabilities for future missions and may aid InSight communications.
These Mars-bound cubes are nicknamed WALL-E and EVE after the animated movie characters. That's because they're equipped with the same type of propulsion used in fire extinguishers to expel foam. In the 2008 movie, WALL-E used a fire extinguisher to propel through space.
If it all goes as planned, after a six-month journey, the InSight probe will land on November 26, joining five other NASA spacecraft operating on and above Mars.
InSight will be the first mission to peer deep beneath the Martian surface, studying the planet's interior by measuring its heat output and listening for marsquakes, which are seismic events similar to earthquakes on Earth. It will use the seismic waves generated by marsquakes to develop a map of the planet's deep interior. The resulting insight into Mars' formation will help us better understand how other rocky planets, including Earth, were and are created.
InSight doesn't have wheels and builds on the design of the Phoenix lander and, before that, the Viking landers. They are all stationary three-legged landers; no roaming around.
However, it does have a 7.8-foot-long robotic arm. The arm will place a seismometer on the ground to detect the "marsquakes." Another instrument will dig 16 feet into the ground, deeper than any instrument ever sent to Mars. The arm has a camera that will snap color 3-D images, and there's a second camera on the spaceship's body that will provide wide-angle views. InSight stands for "Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport."
