Welcome To The New, Official NASA Tumblr. We’re Going To Be Giving You A Regular Dose Of Space Here.

If you couldn’t tell already, NASA is having a great year. From Pluto to food grown in space, even in the face of budget cuts, the nation’s space agency had some stellar highlights. Most mysteriously of all, a spacecraft found two eerily bright lights on a distant dwarf planet.

Stardust Mika Suutari

walstraasart

InSight Mission to Mars

Our InSight mission will place a fixed science outpost on Mars to study its deep interior. Findings and research from this project will address one of the most fundamental questions we have about planetary and solar system science – How in the world did these rocky planets form?

By investigating the interior structure and processes of Mars, the InSight mission will gain a better understanding of the evolutionary formation of planets, including Earth.

InSight will record Mars’ vital signs to learn more about the planet, including:

Seismic Activity:

A seismometer will be used to record the seismic activity on Mars. This will give us information on the crust, mantel and core; and the relationship between them.

Temperature:

A heat flow probe will be used to take Mars’ temperature and determine the change over the course of a full Martian year.

Reflexes:

By looking at how the rotation of Mars wobbles, we will better understand what the core size may be and its composition.

Launch for the InSight mission is scheduled for March 2016, and even though you can’t physically travel with the lander, you can send your name to the Red Planet onboard. Make sure to submit your name before Sept. 8!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Give support to this project

A galactic sunflower

Saturn, Cincinnati Observatory. _Popular astronomy_ 1860.

Image of the galaxy NGC 5866