NASA - Jet Propulsion Laboratory[/caption] For all of its desolate alien façade, Mars has enough similarities to Earth to continually intrigue scientists. On May 5, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will be launching another probe to the Red Planet but this one will not have the superficial focus of prior Mars Rovers, reports Science News. Skin Deep
Astronomists and scientists look upon Mars as the closest planetary copy of Earth that is within the ‘easy’ grasp of exploratory satellites and probes. Formed 4.5 billion years ago, Mars is believed to have a superheated magma core and mantle covered with a veneer of crust. How skin deep this crust is and how hot the core is are among some of the missions for the new probe, called InSight, that will be launched at 7:05 a.m. EST from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
“We have spent a lot of effort scratching at the surface of Mars, but InSight is one of the first missions really dedicated to exploring the other 99.9999 percent of Mars,” says planetary scientist Matthew Siegler of the Planetary Science Institute, based in Dallas, who is not part of the InSight team. “We want to know what it is truly made of, not just the thin candy coating.” An acronym for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, InSight was originally scheduled for a 2016 launch, but equipment failure pushed the departure to May 5. And if the probe looks familiar, it is because it is styled after the Mars Rover but having larger solar panels.
Once on the Red Planet in November of 2019, InSight will use seismic and temperature instruments in an effort to form a more complete picture of what Bruce Banerdt, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, calls a ‘Goldilocks planet.’ Banerdt’s allusion is prompted by the close similarities to earth as well as the low level of geologic activity. This gives scientists a ‘cleaner’ historical record to work with. A Deeper InSight Probing thousands of miles beneath the barren surface of Mars may provide scientists with a greater understanding of not only how Mars came together but how our solar system developed.
Mars.NASA.Gov[/caption] “It’s going to fill in some really big holes in our understanding of the universe,” says Banerdt. With seismometers, the research team will evaluate seismic waves traveling through the planet triggered by the surface’s cooling and contraction, much like how it is done on Earth. The process is based on the known travel speeds of kinetic energy traveling through different materials, thus giving scientists an indirect answer to what resides in the terra subterranea of Mars. Taking Mars internal temperature will be a slow process. InSight will methodically drill down and record the temperature every half meter to five meters. This will construct a list of variables that scientists then can extrapolate from. A Golden State First Science News writes that “InSight will be the first interplanetary mission to launch from California. The spacecraft will spend several months in transit. Once it lands, a robotic arm will pick up each of the instruments and gently place them on the ground over the following month or two.” “From then on, we’re very quiet — these instruments need to make their measurements in as quiet a situation as possible,” Banerdt says. “Nothing much happens after that, except we get great science.” Another first will be InSight’s deployment of interplanetary CubeSats — a pair of tiny satellites called MarCO that will be dropped off in Mars’ orbit. “We’ve been working to get a mission like this for 25 or 30 years,” Banerdt says. “It’s really an incredible rush to be getting close to launching this thing.” You can watch the launch coverage starting at 6:30 a.m. EDT on NASA’s website.