NEW YORK: Besides some Martian meteorites collected on Earth, some gravity data from spacecraft and other bits of information, our knowledge of the planet’s insides is small, said Bruce Banerdt, the principal investigator of a new lander called InSight, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. But that’s about to change.
InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) will launch for Mars in March on a quick six-month journey to the Red Planet. Upon arriving at the Martian equator, the spacecraft will deploy a small drill to probe the planet’s interior and a seismometer to measure any “marsquakes” that occur.
“Mars is a really good laboratory to understand how planets form into the complex bodies they are,” Banerdt told Discovery News. This is because the lack of plate tectonics means the planet did not meld its early rocks into the interior (unlike Earth). Also, it’s big enough to have a complex interior with a core and mantle, unlike Earth’s nearby moon.
Pakistan to get $3b loan from Islamic Trade Financing Corporation
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