Mars lander to seek ‘Marsquakes’

Vandenberg Air Force Base (US), May 5: NASA on Saturday blasted off its latest Mars lander, InSight, designed to perch on the surface and listen for “Marsquakes” ahead of eventual human missions to explore the Red Planet.

“Three, two, one, liftoff!” said a NASA commentator as the spacecraft launched on a dark, foggy morning atop an Atlas V rocket at 4.05 am Pacific time (1635 IST) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, marking NASA’s first interplanetary launch from the US west coast.

The $993 million project aims to expand human knowledge of interior conditions on Mars, inform efforts to send human explorers there, and reveal how rocky planets like the Earth formed billions of years ago.

If all goes as planned, the lander should settle on the Red Planet on November 26. Its name, InSight, is short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport.

NASA chief scientist Jim Green said experts already know that Mars has quakes, avalanches and meteor strikes.

“But how quake-prone is Mars? That is fundamental information that we need to know as humans that explore Mars,” Green said. The key instrument on board is a seismometer, called the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure, made by the French Space Agency.

After the lander settles on the Martian surface, a robotic arm is supposed to emerge and place the seismometer directly on the ground. The second main instrument is a self-hammering probe that will monitor the flow of heat in the planet’s subsurface.

Called the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package, it was made by the German Space Agency along with the Polish Space Agency. — Agencies