NASA plans to launch a relatively modest Mars lander in 2016 that will make a rocket-powered descent to the surface to study whether the red planet's core is solid or liquid and whether the planet has tectonic plates that slowly move like continents on Earth, agency managers said Monday.
The primary goals of the cost-capped Discovery-class mission are to learn more about what shaped Mars' evolution and why the planet turned out so similar, and yet so different, than Earth.
"This has been something that has interested the scientific community for many years," NASA science chief John Grunsfeld, an astronomer and former space shuttle astronaut, told reporters in an afternoon teleconference. "Seismology, for instance, is the standard method by which we've learned to understand the interior of the Earth and we have no such knowledge for Mars.
NASA plans to launch a relatively modest Mars lander called 'InSight' in 2016 to study the red planet's interior.
(Credit: NASA)
"This has been something that the principal investigator has been trying to get to Mars for nearly three decades. So I'm really thrilled that this is now at a mature stage where he has been able to propose something that squarely fits within the cost and schedule constraints of the Discovery program."
Called InSight, for Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, the new spa... [Read more]
No comments:
Post a Comment