NASA to launch its first lander to Mars since 2012
- Published
NASA is launching its latest Mars explorer — a robot that will sit on the surface of the Red Planet and measure the world as it quakes and unravel the mystery of how rocky planets like Earth form.
The launch is scheduled for on Saturday at 7:05 am Eastern time (1105 GMT) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and if all goes as planned, it should land on the Red Planet November 26.
Since the Earth and Mars likely formed by similar processes 4.5 billion years ago, the US space agency hopes the lander — officially known as Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) — will shed light on what made them so different.
InSight is a lander, not a rover; once it touches down on Mars, it will stay put for the rest of its lifetime on the planet.
“How we get from a ball of featureless rock into a planet that may or may not support life is a key question in planetary science and we’d like to be able to understand what happend,” said Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
On Earth, these processes have been obscured over billions of years by earthquakes and the movement of molten rock in the mantle, he mentioned.
But Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun and Earth’s smaller and less geologically active neighbor, may yield more clues.
The lander will gather information using three instruments: a French-made seismometer, a device to help scientists on Earth keep precise track of the lander’s location as Mars rotates, and a self-hammering probe that will monitor the flow of heat in the planet’s subsurface.
The US spent $813.8 million on the spacecraft and rocket launch, while investments on the instruments from France and Germany amount to $180 million, according to NASA.
A pair of mini-spacecraft that are also launching on the rocket cost NASA $18.5 million.
Known as Mars Cube One, or MarCO, the briefcase-sized satellites “will fly on their own path to Mars behind InSight,” and test tiny new deep space communications equipment, NASA said.
Edited by Neo Sesinye
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