InSight, a new Mars rover, is on track for a 2016 mission to the Red planet, after completing a critical design review.
Insight is an acronym for Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport. This will be the first mission to ever look deep into the crust of Mars, in order to explore layers beneath the surface.
Mars, Earth and other rocky planets consist of a crust, layered over a mantle and inner layers, surrounding a core. The new rover will carry a wide range of instruments, designed to study these inner layers.
InSight is scheduled for launch in March 2016, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The craft will spend six months traveling to its destination. Once InSight lands on the Martian surface, the mission is expected to last 720 Earth-days.
"Mars actually offers an advantage over Earth itself for understanding how habitable planetary surfaces can form. Both planets underwent the same early processes. But Mars, being smaller, cooled faster and became less active while Earth kept churning. So Mars better preserves the evidence about the early stages of rocky planets' development," Bruce Banerdt, JPL's InSight principal investigator, said.
Unlike Curiosity and Opportunity, two NASA rovers on the planet, InSight will stay in one location, studying the ground immediately beneath its landing spot.
France and Germany constructed instruments which will be carried on a robotic arm, attached to the space craft. This hardware will allow researchers the chance to study composition and makeup of the crust and below.
"As part of its investigation, InSight would use a seismometer and a heat-flow probe to study the interior structure of the Red Planet," NASA officials wrote on the Web page for the mission.
This seismometer will record any "Marsquakes" which occur while it is on the surface. The Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) will be placed on the surface of the planet and a protective cover will be placed over it to protect the experiment from the harsh Martian conditions.
Wind and temperature changes will be carefully recorded using the packages aboard the lander.
InSight will use a three-legged landing system, much like the previous Phoenix spacecraft, which was launched to Mars in August 2007, and landed in May 2008. That vehicle was the first ever to land at a polar region of Mars, and the mission continued until November 2008, when communication with the ground was lost.
Successful completion of the Mission Critical Design Review allows the American space agency and international partners to proceed with construction of the vehicle.
