This color image from NASA's Curiosity rover's Mast Camera shows part of the wall of Gale Crater, the location on Mars where the rover landed Aug. 5, 2012 on Mars. NASA/Getty Images

U.S. President Barack Obama and French President Francois Hollande dined together Tuesday night at a state dinner filled with stars like director J.J. Abrams and comedian Stephen Colbert — one day after the two countries signed a celestial deal for cooperation on a future Mars lander mission to determine the interior structure of the planet. The pact follows the successful landing and research carried out by NASA’s Curiosity rover.

The mission, dubbed the Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport (InSight), follows more than 20 years of cooperation between NASA and the National Center of Space Studies of France (CNES), NASA administrator Charles Bolden said in a press release.

“The research generated by this collaborative mission will give our agencies more information about the early formation of Mars, which will help us understand more about how Earth evolved,” Bolden said.

The exploration of Mars is a top priority for NASA, which plans a future human mission there.

InSight will launch in March 2016 and is scheduled to land on Mars six months later. The mission hopes to learn more about the evolutionary formation of rocky planets — including Earth.

NASA and CNES will place instruments on the Martian surface to determine whether the core of the red planet is solid or liquid, like Earth’s. It will investigate why Mars’ crust is not divided into tectonic plates that drift like Earth’s.

It also seeks to understand Martian tectonic activity and meteorite impacts. By measuring seismic waves traveling through the the planet's interior, InSight hopes to discover clues about the earliest stages of the Mar’s formation.