NASA’s Insight, the latest Mars probe, will culminate a seven-month journey as it lands on the surface of the red planet on Monday.
NASA’s latest Mars probe, InSight, will culminate a seven-month journey through space on Monday as it lands on the surface of the red planet.
If successful, the probe will be the first NASA craft to land on Mars since the Curiosity rover touched down in 2012. However, InSight isn’t a rover. The craft will remain stationary while on Mars, conducting a mission that will last about two years on Earth.
InSight – also known as Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport – has been sent to gauge how the planet formed, with the craft containing equipment to test Mars‘ internal temperature and seismology. NASA will use that information to study not only how Mars came to be, but other planets in the solar system, including Earth.
InSight’s landing will be the most treacherous part of the trip, with NASA’s mission control unaware of what is happening to the lander as it enters Mars‘ atmosphere.
It will take six minutes for the craft’s status reports to transmit back to NASA, leaving engineers, scientists and others who worked on the mission biting their nails, LiveScience reports.
