NASA, the US space agency, finalizes the last details of the InSight mission to Mars which has the goal to explore the interior of the Red Planet. NASA InSight mission to Mars is set to launch in a little more than 35 days.
NASA plans to study Mars’ interior to better understand how the Earth formed
As of next May 5, NASA will be able to send a robotic vehicle that has the mission to study the interior of the Red Planet, in order to discover more about how this was formed.
“The objective is to know more about the birth of the Earth, and we’ll do that from Mars, although it may sound strange,” said Bruce Banerdt, the mission’s principal investigator, during the statement NASA made today.
Also, the expert stressed that by knowing the core of Mars scientists can learn more about how the planet has evolved, its layers, and about the planet’s core, too, which will allow the scientists to extrapolate and better understand the formation of the Earth.
InSight is planned to reach Mars by the end of November
The mission, which will last almost two years, is funded and coordinated mostly by the US but also Germany, France, and Spain have contributed In total, the InSight mission to Mars will cost roughly around $1 billion, in total.
The launching is scheduled to take place on May 5th but, if anything goes wrong, NASA can postpone it until June 8th. However, if everything goes as expected, the InSight mission will reach to destination, Mars, on November 26th.
NASA will study the Red Planet’s interior with a specially equipped robot
The NASA InSight mission robot packs an earthquakes monitoring equipment and a small drilling machine that will penetrate the surface to reach five meters deep, which would allow scientists to measure the Martian internal temperature for the first time in the history.
In this way, InSight will combine the information about the heat fluxes with other data to reveal how the underground energies imply certain changes in the surface of Mars.
In conclusion, NASA finalizes the last details regarding the InSight mission to Mars which is set to launch on May 5th.
