NASA wants to learn more about Mars' unique qualities, and the space agency's InSight mission aims to be a step in the right direction.
The hardware for the mission just arrived at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California this week, and it won't be long now before it sits atop an Atlas V rocket for launch. Engineers are already preparing it for the next stages before launch.
InSight will land on the Martian surface and probe the red planet's internal activity for clues about how the world formed. It has been carefully built to collect a variety of datasets, like tectonic activity, internal temperature, and orbital wobble, just to name a few.
According to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, InSight will become the first planetary spacecraft launched from this particular facility and is slated to blast off sometime between May 5th and June 8th.
At this point in time, we have no idea what we might learn from InSight, and that's the whole reason it's going to Mars. If we're lucky, we might learn a thing or two about the planet's physical features and whether it's capable of supporting life.
