NASA sending craft to study interior of Mars

U.s.-european mission set to launch Saturday

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Six years after last landing on Mars, NASA is sending a robotic geologist to dig deeper than ever before to take the planet’s temperature.

The Mars Insight spacecraft, set to launch this weekend, will also take the planet’s pulse by making the first measurements of “marsquakes.” And scientists will track the wobbly rotation of Mars on its axis to understand the size and makeup of its core.

The lander’s instruments will allow scientists “to stare down deep into the planet,” said the mission’s chief scientist, Bruce Banerdt of NASA’S Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“Beauty’s not just skin deep here,” he said.

The $1 billion U.s.-european mission is the first dedicated to studying the innards of Mars. By probing Mars’ insides, scientists hope to understand how the red planet formed 4.5 billion years ago.

Mars is smaller and geologically less active than Earth, where plate tectonics and other processes have obscured our planet’s original makeup. As a result, Mars has retained the “fingerprints” of early evolution, said Banerdt.

In another first for the mission, a pair of briefcase-size satellites will launch aboard Insight, break free after liftoff and follow the spacecraft for six months all the way to Mars, which they will fly past. The point is to test the two Cubesats as a potential communication link with Insight as it descends to the red planet on Nov. 26.

Insight is scheduled to rocket away from central California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base early Saturday. It will be NASA’S first interplanetary mission launched from somewhere other than Florida’s Cape Canaveral.

Scientists are shooting for two years of work — that’s two years by Earth standards, or the equivalent of one full Martian year.

“Mars is still a pretty mysterious planet,” Banerdt said. “Even with all the studying that we’ve done, it could throw us a curveball.”