Since Elon Musk’s announcement about SpaceX’s plans to colonize Mars by 2024, many believed the red planet would remain untouched until then. While the space race is being dominated by private aerospace companies such as SpaceX and Boeing, governments are still launching their own space initiatives and programs.
At the center of it all is NASA, which is bringing back its Discovery Program and restoring the core of the agency and what brought it recognition in the first place—space exploration. After 10 years since its last touchdown on the red planet, NASA is finally returning to Mars with the InSight probe.
InSight is an abbreviation for the means the project will initialize—Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport—in order to meet the program’s goals on Mars. While NASA has already conducted missions on the Mars surface, it has never gone further or deeper. This new probe is intended to explore the deep interior of Mars.
InSight will go deep beneath the surface of Mars, studying indicators of how the terrestrial planet possibly formed. It is set to land on Elysium Planitia, an expanse that is amusingly described by one of the mission’s principal investigators as “Kansas without the corn.” Sophisticated geophysical instruments will be measuring the red planet’s metrics. According to NASA, this will involve seismology, a heat flow probe and precision tracking.
The probe aims to answer one primary question: How did the terrestrial planets form? InSight was created to understand the geophysical mysteries surrounding the planet’s structure, composition and how it formed.
“Everything we’re doing with InSight is trying to understand how Mars formed and evolved,” said Mark Panning, co-investigator for the InSight mission. “In order to piece together the whole picture about how the terrestrial planets formed, we need to understand this basic part of Mars and its history.”
NASA’s Discovery Program aims to enhance understanding of the planetary and solar system by exploring planets, their moons and other bodies such as comets and asteroids. Overall, 21 spacecraft have been sent to Mars, with two rovers currently exploring craters and six satellites operating overhead. InSight hopes to expand the knowledge base for planetary and solar system science on how the rocky planets of the inner solar system—including Earth—were shaped more than 4 billion years ago.
NASA’s InSight probe will commemorate a handful of firsts. It will be the first planetary mission to take off from the West Coast at Space Launch Complex-3 on Vandenberg Air Force Base in California with a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket. It also will be the first lander on Mars since the Phoenix, which landed near the north polar cap in 2008.
Coupled with the launch of InSight is the Mars Cube One (MarCO). This will be the first deep-space testing of CubeSat technology. These miniature satellites will serve as communication relays for InSight while it tests new communications and navigation capabilities for succeeding missions.
The launch is scheduled for May 5, 7:05 AM EDT (4:05 AM PDT). Live coverage will begin at 6:30 AM on both NASA television and online mission coverage outlets. The media and public are encouraged to ask questions through social media with the hash tag #askNASA, which will be addressed by the program’s directors and investigation team.