14 DAY TRIAL // Officials at the American space agency yesterday announced a new mission aimed at the Red Planet. Called InSight, the spacecraft will be a lander capable of drilling deep in the Martian soil and retrieve samples for later analysis.
This will be the first mission ever destined to investigate the interior of the planet in detail. Through it, experts could finally gain a deeper understanding of what goes on at the core of our neighboring world.
InSight, currently scheduled to launch in 2016, will perhaps provide an explanation as to why the Red Planet evolved so differently compared to Earth. While our planet's core is still liquid, allowing us to be protected by a magnetosphere, the central portion of Mars is believed to have solidified long ago.
Another mystery related to the surface of the neighboring planet is the absence of tectonic plates. Geologists believe that plate tectonics should occur on all worlds with a liquid core and a mantle. This was also the case on Mars, but studies as to whether or not these plates actually exist are inconclusive.
NASA officials said on August 20 that InSight is the12th selection in the NASA Discovery-class mission series. The Discovery Program was initiated back in 1992 and deals with building and launching cost-capped missions all over the solar system.
Of the 28 proposals the agency received two years ago, experts selected three back in May, 2011. InSight is the final selection, the mission deemed to exhibit the highest-possible scientific return. The other two missions targeted a comet and Titan, Saturn's largest moon.
“The exploration of Mars is a top priority for NASA, and the selection of InSight ensures we will continue to unlock the mysteries of the Red Planet and lay the groundwork for a future human mission there,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden explained.
“The recent successful landing of the Curiosity rover has galvanized public interest in space exploration and today's announcement makes clear there are more exciting Mars missions to come,” he went on to say.
W. Bruce Banerdt, an expert at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, will be the manager of the new mission. InSight will feature instruments from the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), and the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
“Our Discovery Program enables scientists to use innovative approaches to answering fundamental questions about our solar system in the lowest cost mission category,” NASA Science Mission Directorate associate administrator, John Grunsfeld, told the media yesterday.
“InSight will get to the 'core' of the nature of the interior and structure of Mars, well below the observations we've been able to make from orbit or the surface,” he concluded.