After a journey spanning a mere 300 million miles and taking over six months, NASA's InSight will land on Mars' surface. The Red Planet probe is a joint US-European mission and has been £1 billion in the making.

If the landing all goes to plan, InSight will complete a two year (or one Mars year) mission to gather data about our planetary neighbour.

NASA's 2012 probe, Curiosity, was tasked with a scouting mission while InSight's focus will be to learn what goes on under Mars' surface taking the planet's temperature, and measuring marsquakes.

Life on Mars has long been a topic of fascination in Hollywood, most recently with Mark Watney growing potatoes in a tent. But in reality how will InSight's mission compare to Ridley Scott's The Martian starring Matt Damon?

Professor Tom Pike from Imperial College London is part of the Mars InSight team which designed sensors to detect marsquakes. He hopes to pick up tremors on InSight's mission that will build a picture of Mars' interior and tell us more about how the planet formed.

He spoke to us about InSight's mission and The Martian, and helped us distinguish fact from fiction.