On May 5th 2018, NASA announced the successful launch of it newest robotic lander named Insight. The lift off, took place at Vandenberg Air Force base in southern California, at 4:05 am PDT. The lander will take six months to arrive at the Red Planet after a 301 million mile trek across the solar system. Once there, it is expected to land on Mars on November 26th 2018 at 3 pm EST. The lava plains of Elysium Planitia has been chosen as its lading site.
Insight's mission is to explore the interior of Mars. For that reason, the lander is not a rover, but will remain in a fixed stationary position, after it touches down. The plan is for Insight to probe to a depth of 16 ft, where it will measure the planets temperature and seismic activity. Scientists hope that the data that they receive will help them determine what type of rock Mars is made of. On board radio antennas will also be used to estimate the size of the planets core.
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