Humans have long gazed at the sky and wondered about the heavens above. Luckily, with programs such as NASA and better technology, we can answer these questions. InSight has just reached Mars and scientists are hopeful it will provide more information about the red planet. The Mars lander, InSight (Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport), was launched on May 5, 2018 and finally landed on Mars on November 26, 2018. The lander is located on the equatorial plain Elysium Planitia, a smooth plain near Mars’s equator. Its mission is to explore the interior of the planet Mars. The lander will collect data with three critical components: a seismometer, heat probe, and radio antennas. Discoveries made will not only provide information about Mars, but about the evolution of other rocky planets in the inner solar system, including Earth.
The seismometer studies seismic waves (the same waves than an earthquake produces) with the hopes of discovering more about features that may be causing the waves. The seismometer can measure Marsquakes, meteors and other meteorological events. It was deployed on December 19, 2018. The seismometer has already collected data, recording Martian winds on December 1. Additionally, the seismometer is extremely sensitive and is able to record disturbances as small as a hydrogen atom. As of February 2, 2019, the Wind and Thermal shield was successfully put in place and will prevent background noise from clouding the seismometers supersentive readings. This will make data easier to analyze. It will also protect the instrument from extreme temperatures on Mars, which can vary over 170 degrees Fahrenheit. On Earth, seismometers can be protected from extreme temperature when they are buried underground, but on Mars burying the instrument is not realistic.
The heat probe, called HP3, will dig into Mars to discover how much heat Mars releases. It will eventually be placed sixteen feet under Mars’s surface, deeper than any other previous arms, scoops, probes, or drills have been before. It is scheduled to be released to the surface of Mars sometime next week. By measuring how much heat is released by the planet, scientists will be able to deduce if Mars was formed similarly to the Earth and Moon and how it has evolved over time. It will also provide information on what might be producing the heat Mars releases.
The radio antennas will track how much Mars wobbles on its orbit. Because of the gravity between Earth and the moon, Earth wobbles about once per year and Mars about once every two Earth years. The radio antennas can detect the magnitude of these wobbles with location tracking similar to that in a smartphone. Information about these wobbles will provide data about the size and composition of Mars’s core.
With these technologies, we hope to gain a better understanding of Mars and other rocky planets. While InSight will not answer all our questions about how our planet and solar system came to be, it will give us a better idea of the answer to these questions.