this Monday November 26 around noon
pacific time NASA will attempt to land a
spacecraft called insight on Mars while
a lot of previous missions have looked
for life evidence of past life water
liquid water and so on this is the first
mission dedicated to studying the
interior of Mars insight will do that
from one location there is no Rover so
wherever it touches down is where the
science will happen now insight stands
for interior exploration using seismic
investigations geodesy and heat
transport so let's go through each of
these aspects of the mission and discuss
the many firsts that will be attempted
in sight is the first Mars mission to
use a robotic arm to grasp and place
instruments directly on the surface of
Mars sure some Rovers in the past have
rolled off their base and onto Martian
soil but this is the first time we're
essentially playing the claw game on the
surface of another planet without
real-time feedback of course because of
the long time delays now one of the
instruments that will be placed on the
surface will be the first seismometer
actually on Martian soil the Viking
landers from the 1970s had seismometers
on board but because they weren't placed
directly on the surface of Mars they
essentially just measured the wind
blowing over the lander the seismometer
will detect earthquakes or actually Mars
quakes and landslides and meteorite
impacts now do we expect there to be
many Mars quakes what we really don't
know otherwise what would be the point
of the experiment this is directly
relevant to future human exploration of
Mars because the frequency and intensity
of Mars quakes will determine how we
build our structures and habitats but
the real goal here will be to use any
significant ground motion to figure out
what the interior of Mars is like like
how big is its core is it solid or
liquid it'll be kind of like trying to
figure out the shape and composition of
a bell by listening to its ring seismic
waves travel at different velocities
depending on the density composition and
state of the material they're traveling
through the seismometer should be able
to detect ground motions smaller than
the diameter of a hydrogen atom they're
achieving this with three tiny precision
pendulums now I don't know how that's
actually possible so I'm just taking
their word for it but with such
exquisite sense
divot II they've designed a custom
windshield to go over the whole thing
preventing the atmosphere from adding
noise to the measurements another
instrument will send radio waves back to
earth and by using the Doppler effect we
should be able to measure how Mars's
rotation axis is wobbling this will
provide more insight into the actual
structure of the planet
think about how a raw egg spins compared
to a hard-boiled one the more wobble we
observe the more liquid there is inside
and by combining these observations with
the seismographic data we should be able
to figure out the size of Mars core what
it's made of and whether it's liquid or
solid the thickness and the structure of
the crust and the structure of the
mantle and what it's made of another
first figuring out how much heat is
escaping Mars interior the first heat
probe to be used on Mars will be
deployed on its surface and it will
burrow nearly five meters down into the
planet this is the deepest we have ever
dug on any planet besides Earth in fact
it'll take around three months to dig
that far the probe is attached to a
tether which has 14 temperature sensors
along its length to measure the thermal
gradient beneath the surface and it can
only dig into soil if it hits rock we're
in trouble
this instrument also has heaters on it
so it can warm the ground around it and
see how long it takes for that heat to
reach the other temperature sensors
finally in sight we'll be the first to
use a magnetometer on the surface of
Mars Mars long ago lost its global
magnetic field but there are still
magnetic effects to be measured as the
solar wind strikes Mars upper atmosphere
it creates moving ions that produce
magnetic fields and the likely metallic
core of Mars is proposed to interact
with these magnetic fields which would
be measured on Mars surface so the
magnetometer provides further insight
into the nature of Mars core so what is
the whole point of this mission well
this is straight up science the purpose
is to better understand how rocky
planets like our own form and evolve and
Mars offers a unique opportunity to do
this because it formed at the same time
as Earth from roughly the same stuff
plus it's big enough that it probably
underwent the same geochemical changes
as a
but whereas earth evolved into a lush
Waterworld Mars evolved into a frozen
desert so why is that I mean beyond the
obvious size difference and different
distance to the Sun perhaps insight can
help us find out but first it has to
land on Mars and since less than half of
missions to Mars have landed
successfully that's a big question mark
and if you want you can tune in and
watch the landing live that will only
know about four minutes after touchdown
if it made it or not I'll put a link to
that in the description for me I feel
like this is a great mission to
understand some fundamental science
about planets and their formation and
unlike other missions that go to Mars
and have to claim some sort of profound
life implications this is about
fundamental science and how planets work
which i think is really cool and I'm
looking forward to the results