NASA ’s InSight Lander Is About to Give Mars its First Health Checkup in 4.5 Billion Years

When it comes to Mars, we’ve all gotten spoiled. Back in 1976, it was huge news when Viking 1 and 2 became the first spacecraft to land on the Red Planet. But these days just getting stationary metal on Mars isn’t so exciting, not when we’ve got an SUV-sized rover like Curiosity driving across the Martian plains and craters. A spacecraft that lands and then just sits there is something of a cosmic meh. At 7:05 AM ET on May 5, however, that may change as NASA launches the Mars InSight lander, a sit-there ship that will explore a part of the planet no other spacecraft has studied in detail: its interior. The innards of Mars could teach us not only about the origin and development of the planet itself, but of other rocky worlds in our solar system, as well the countless ones we now know are orbiting other stars. What’s more, two little fly-along spacecraft, officially known as Mars Cube One (or MarCO), but wonderfully nicknamed WALL-E and Eva—after the characters in the exquisite Pixar film—will provide the first-ever test of miniature satellites in deep space. For all its potential, InSight is a small and inexpensive spacecraft, as these things go. Weighing just 790 lbs. (358 kg), standing a maximum of 43 inches (108 cm), and with a width of 19 ft., 8 in. (6 m) with its solar array extended, it cost just $813.8 million, $163.4 million of which is attributed to its Atlas V launch vehicle. But there’s impressive stuff packed into the com...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized onetime space Source Type: news