New NASA Mission to Take First Look Deep Inside Mars
NASA has selected a new mission, set to launch in 2016, that will take the first look into the deep interior of Mars to study its evolution compared with other rocky planets.
PASADENA,  Calif. -- NASA has selected a new mission, set to launch in 2016, that will  take the first look into the deep interior of Mars to see why the Red Planet  evolved so differently from Earth as one of our solar system's rocky planets.The new  mission, named InSight, will place instruments on the Martian surface to  investigate whether the core of Mars is solid or liquid like Earth's, and why  Mars' crust is not divided into tectonic plates that drift like Earth's. Detailed  knowledge of the interior of Mars in comparison to Earth will help scientists  understand better how terrestrial planets form and evolve."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 said. "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."InSight will  be led by W. Bruce Banerdt at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,  Calif. InSight's science team includes U.S. and international co-investigators  from universities, industry and government agencies. The French space agency Centre  National d'Etudes Spatiales, or CNES, and the German Aerospace Center are  contributing instruments to InSight, which is scheduled to land on Mars in  September 2016 to begin its two-year scientific mission.InSight  is the 12th selection in NASA's series of Discovery-class missions. Created in  1992, the Discovery Program sponsors frequent, cost-capped solar system  exploration missions with highly focused scientific goals. NASA requested  Discovery mission proposals in June 2010 and received 28. InSight was one of  three proposed missions selected in May 2011 for funding to conduct preliminary  design studies and analyses. The other two proposals were for missions to a  comet and Saturn's moon Titan.InSight  builds on spacecraft technology used in NASA's highly successful Phoenix lander  mission, which was launched to the Red Planet in 2007 and determined water  existed near the surface in the Martian polar regions. By incorporating proven  systems in the mission, the InSight team demonstrated that the mission concept  was low-risk and could stay within the cost-constrained budget of Discovery missions.  The cost of the mission, excluding the launch vehicle and related services, is  capped at $425 million in 2010 dollars."Our  Discovery Program enables scientists to use innovative approaches to answering  fundamental questions about our solar system in the lowest cost mission  category," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the Science  Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. "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."InSight  will carry four instruments. JPL will provide an onboard geodetic instrument to  determine the planet's rotation axis and a robotic arm and two cameras used to  deploy and monitor instruments on the Martian surface. CNES is leading an  international consortium that is building an instrument to measure seismic  waves traveling through the planet's interior. The German Aerospace Center is  building a subsurface heat probe to measure the flow of heat from the interior.JPL provides project  management for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. NASA's Marshall Space Flight  Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Discovery Program for the agency's  Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in  Denver will build the spacecraft.  JPL is  a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.For more information  about InSight, visit:http://insight.jpl.nasa.gov.For more  information about the Discovery Program, visit:http://discovery.nasa.gov.For  information about NASA and agency programs, visit:http://www.nasa.gov.