The InSight lander of NASA is set to venture to Mars next spring – and answer the question of what can be found behind the mysterious red surface – as the first robot geophysics mission to the planet.

The InSight lander, the space agency’s first robot geophysicist, is poised to gather as much information on Mars’ interior while staying safely at the surface. Its range of geophysical tools includes a deep probe that will penetrate further below the surface than any other robot on Mars previously attempted.

“The lander has been fully assembled and is in its testing phase. We have finished all the major environments tests and are currently working through operational testing,” reported William Banerdt, InSight principal investigator at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA.

The lander will blast out of California on March 2016. Provided it leaves Earth before the launch window ends on Mar. 30, it will descend on the red planet six months later and will set up in Elysium Planitia, a smooth and flat terrain selected for being the largest friendly landscape in the area.

InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigation, Geodesy and Heat Transport) will also deploy two probes: a seismic station sitting on the surface and then a heat flow probe that will drill up to 16 feet into the ground.

Details hoped to be obtained from the mission include data on the thickness of the crust, the mantle’s composition, the state of the planet’s core, as well as any level of tectonic activity and meteorite impact rate based on the seismic station. All these are a first actual look at Mars, away from the usual indirect observations and guesses.

The mission, expected to produce more than 26 gigabytes of data annually, is also expected to monitor the radio signal of the lander for measuring wobbles in Mars’ rotation to know if it has a liquid or solid core, as well as utilize cameras, environmental sensors and tools for gauging magnetic field fluctuations.

“InSight will delve deep beneath the surface … measuring the planet’s ‘vital signs’: its ‘pulse’ (seismology), ‘temperature’ (heat flow probe) and ‘reflexes’ (precision tracking),” the mission website stated. “InSight seeks to answer one of science’s most fundamental questions: How did the terrestrial planets form?”

The InSight mission is the 12th of the space agency’s Discovery-class missions, one of the 28 proposed in 2010 costing about $425 million exclusive of launch. Its two competitors included a mission to a comet and to Saturn’s moon Titan.

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