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NASA mission to the ‘heart’ of Mars
Why is it in news?
NASA would send a mission to study the deep interiors of Mars
Details
- NASA’s first-ever mission to study the deep interior of Mars is on schedule to launch this week.
- The Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) is the first planetary mission to take off from the West Coast of U.S.
- Launching on the same rocket is a separate NASA technology experiment known as Mars Cube One (MarCO), which consists of two mini-spacecraft and will be the first test of CubeSat technology in deep space. The lander will study the deep interior of Mars to learn how all rocky planets formed, including Earth and its Moon.
About InSight
- InSightis a robotic Mars lander designed to study the interior and subsurface of Mars, which would in turn help scientists to understand the Earth and Solar System history. The mission is planned to launch in May 2018 and land on the surface of Mars in November 2018, where it will deploy a seismometer and a burrowing heat probe. It will also perform a radio science experiment to study the internal structure of Mars.
- InSight'sobjective is to place a stationary lander equipped with a seismometer and heat transfer probe on the surface of Mars to study the planet's early geological evolution. This could bring new understanding of the Solar System's terrestrial planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars — and the Earth's Moon. By reusing technology from the Mars Phoenix lander, which successfully landed on Mars in 2008, it is expected that the cost and risk will be reduced.
- The name is an acronymfor Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat T
Source
The Hindu