On Saturday,Watch The Lion King Online NASA will launch its next mission to Mars. This time the lander, known as InSight, is focused squarely on learning more about the inner-workings of the red planet.
The space agency's InSight lander is expected to take about seven months between launch and -- if all goes well -- landing on the planet in November to gather all the data it can about the Martian geology around it and below it.
SEE ALSO: Incredible new photo shows Mars bathed in dramatic lightWhile the mission probably won't directly help humans get to Mars in the coming decades, the science InSight is tasked with is still pretty amazing.
Unlike earlier missions that mostly dealt with Mars' surface features, InSight will take a look beneath the red dirt of the world to learn more about how the planet itself formed.
"In some ways InSight is like a scientific time machine that will bring back information about the earliest stages of Mars' formation four-and-a-half billion years ago," NASA's Bruce Banerdt, InSight's principal investigator, said in a statement.
"It will help us learn how rocky bodies form, including Earth, its moon, and even planets in other solar systems."
While this lander may not be as flashy as other missions NASA has sent to Mars -- I'm looking at you, Curiosity -- it will search for something other spacecraft haven't been able to measure.
The car-sized lander will be on the lookout for "marsquakes," which are similar to earthquakes, except on Mars. That said, marsquakes aren't caused by plate tectonics, like most earthquakes on our home planet.
Instead, marsquakes likely occur infrequently due to the contraction of rock as it cools.
Whenever a marsquake hits, InSight will take a photo of the world's interior, giving scientists back on Earth a view of Mars from the inside.
"It will be a fuzzy picture at first, but the more quakes we see, the sharper it will get," Banerdt said in a statement.
"We have to get clever. We can measure how various waves from the same quake bounce off things and hit the station at different times."
By learning more about marsquakes and the Martian geology underfoot, researchers should have a chance to figure out the history of how the planet and others like it form.
"The signatures of the planet's formation can only be found by sensing and studying its vital signs far below the surface," NASA said.
Scientists have wanted to mount a mission like InSight for decades.
While we know the broad strokes of how rocky worlds formed -- planets condensed out of a cloud of gas and dust around the sun after the dawn of the solar system more than 4 billion years ago -- we still need to understand more about why Mars is the cold, dead world it is today.
Via GiphyOne important reason scientists are hunting for information about how Mars formed, along with other planets, is because they're hoping to understand more about how planets outside of our solar system formed.
Even though InSight is a mission to Mars, it could help us learn more about our own home, too.
"Some of the ever-increasing number of exoplanets identified around stars other than our sun may be similarly rocky and layered, though Earthlike worlds are smaller than the giant exoplanets whose size makes them easiest to find," NASA said in a press release.
"A key challenge in planetary science half a century into the Space Age is to understand factors that affect how newly forming planets with the same starting materials evolve into worlds as diverse as the terrestrial planets. As a particularly interesting corollary: What does it take to make a planet as special as Earth?"
On Saturday at 7:05 a.m. ET, InSight will launch to Mars atop an Atlas V rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, a launch site that has never before sent a spacecraft to Mars.
Other missions to Mars have typically launched from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, where the rotation of the Earth to the east helps the missions along on their way to space. InSight's planned launch from the West Coast indicates that NASA wants to take advantage of the Atlas V's power.
This particular rocket, built by United Launch Alliance, is powerful enough to fly south from Vandenberg, meaning that it can get to Mars relatively easily from the West Coast, NASA said.
Also, the launch site's schedule was meant that its pads were more available for this mission.
"Besides, Vandenberg Air Force Base is more available at this time to accommodate InSight's five-week launch window," NASA said.
For the first time in history, NASA will send two tiny satellites -- called cubesats -- to a world other than our own.
The twin satellites, called Mars Cube One (MarCO) spacecraft, are designed as technology demonstrations, but they could one day be used to relay flight data from future Mars landings back to Earth, NASA said in a statement.
Historically, the U.S. is the only country to ever successfully land rovers or landers on Mars, so having more information about what goes wrong (or right) during a landing could make it much easier to figure out how to be successful next time.
Plus, the two MarCO satellites have some pretty adorable names.
While the official names for the spacecraft are MarCO-A and MarCO-B, the two cubesats were nicknamed Wall-E and Eva by the engineers that built them, according to NASA.
"These are our scouts," MarCO's chief engineer Andy Klesh said in a statement.
"Cubesats haven't had to survive the intense radiation of a trip to deep space before, or use propulsion to point their way towards Mars. We hope to blaze that trail."
Google, the world's top advertising company, is building an ad blocker for ChromeFacebook's first social VR app is coolHow to remove Instagram live video notificationsWhy Trump's latest speech is a big deal for Silicon ValleyKaty Perry's picture of Hindu goddess on Instagram offends IndiansThis coding startup trains autistic people to take on the tech industryNow you can order and pay for Subway in Facebook MessengerJohn Boyega has a lot of time for your erotic 'Star Wars' fan fictionI tried to join an Instagram pod and it was like high school all over againPetsmart bought Chewy.com in what's reported to be the biggest eJuicero offers refunds after its $400 juice press is proven pointlessHodor considers entering politics to fight for marriage equalityNorth Koreans have been spotted playing volleyball at its nuclear test siteGenius pet owner turned oldThe internet is savaging the rhetoric of 'Australian values,' whatever those areThis hot videoiPhone 8 design leak hints at backside Touch ID, vertical dual camerasA French presidential candidate held 7 rallies at once with this technologyWingman is the dating app that lets you play matchmaker for your friendsThis hot video NYT Strands hints, answers for October 10 October Prime Day Dyson deals [2024] Amazon Prime Day deal: Save $100 on the trendy Bose SoundLink Max portable speaker Best monitor deal: Save up to 42% on monitors at Amazon from Samsung, Acer, Asus, and more Apple Vision Pro: You may never meet The Weeknd, but this new experience brings you close 49ers vs. Seahawks 2024 livestream: How to watch NFL for free Best LG TV deal: Save $700 on LG C4 OLED TV this Prime Day 'Mario & Luigi: Brothership' hands Amazon Prime Day deal: Start your ice cream shop with the Ninja Creami, now 20% off Prime Day 2024 PlayStation 5 deals Cockatiels are eating on TikTok and leaving no crumbs Prime Day Grubhub deal: Members get 50% off an order Best October Prime Day MacBook deals: Shop record Prime Big Deal Days 2024: Apple deals are still live Samsung Galaxy S25: New photo appears to leak all three models Best Amazon Prime Day gaming laptop deals still live: Alienware, Acer, and more Best Prime Day laptop deals still live: Shop record lows on Apple, Asus, LG October Prime Day luggage deals [2024] Best Roomba deal: Save $110 on Q011 robot vacuum on October Prime Day Apple's leaked M4 Macbook Pro is being hawked on a Russian website
3.1963s , 10138.2265625 kb
Copyright © 2025 Powered by 【Watch The Lion King Online】,Steady Information Network