yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

How NASA's Next Mars Mission Will Take the Red Planet's Pulse | Decoder


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

A ball of fire pierces the atmosphere of Mars, plummeting towards the surface at 13,200 miles per hour. This fireball across the horizon marks the end of a 301 million mile journey for NASA's InSight and the beginning of a groundbreaking mission. For five decades, NASA probes have explored the exterior of the Martian landscape and atmosphere, but now, for the first time, the InSight lander will go deeper than ever before inside the ancient mysteries of the red planet.

What's inside Mars, and how can the red planet help us better understand our own? Go, Atlas, go! Inside, this is the Atlas V. On May 5th, 2018, it became the first rocket to launch an interplanetary mission from the west coast of the United States. Cruising through space for 205 days, InSight will fly almost halfway around the sun and eventually intersect with its final destination, Mars.

The fourth planet from the sun, Mars is the second smallest in the solar system. It's a rocky planet like Earth, but much of what's inside is still a mystery. To give us a window into Mars’ deep interior, NASA's InSight lander will check the planet's vital signs for clues. Unlike previous Mars missions, this probe will stay in one place for the duration of its mission.

First, it will check its pulse. Its sensitive seismometer will gauge vibrations from meteor impacts or marsquakes caused by shifting rocks. Listening to these shakes and quakes will make it possible for us to determine the depth and composition of its crust, mantle, and core.

Next, InSight will check the planet's temperature. Its heat probe will burrow deep underground, up to a depth of 16 feet beneath the Martian surface. This groundbreaking device will measure the planet's interior temperatures and track how they fluctuate throughout the year.

To complete its checkup, InSight will test the reflexes of Mars by measuring small changes in a radio signal from Earth. This will show us how much the planet wobbles in its rotation, which can give us clues about its core composition. If Mars has a liquid core, its rotation will be more wobbly, and if its core is more solid, we'll see less wobbling.

When studied together, these vital signs will give us valuable insight into rocky planets as well as improve our understanding of how they form. It's exciting to consider the future possibilities of human habitation on Mars, but as we look forward, we must also make sure to look backwards to learn from our solar system's ancient past. Who knows what secrets the universe might reveal?

More Articles

View All
From Broke To $500,000,000 (The Empire of Ben Mallah)
So I’d like to introduce you to the most loud-mouthed, over-the-top offensive real estate mogul you’re ever going to meet: Ben Mala. “I bought it because I’m a big fat [__] business, that’s what you worry about.” He is your true rags-to-riches story, hav…
Angular momentum of an extended object | Physics | Khan Academy
[Voiceover] So we saw in previous videos that a ball of mass m rotating in a circle of radius r at a speed v has what we call angular momentum, and the symbol we use for angular momentum is a capital L. The amount of angular momentum that it would have wo…
Visually dividing whole numbers by unit fractions
[Narrator] If five is divided into pieces that are each one half of a whole, how many pieces are there? And this would be the equivalent of saying, “What is five divided by 1⁄2?” And they help us out with this visual. So pause this video and see if you ca…
Taking a Family Road Trip | National Geographic
(Calm music) [Corey] I feel most alive when I’m out exploring. (Acoustic music) We’re taking our son on a road trip to Wallowa-Whitman National Forest in Eastern Oregon. There’s something special about looking out on the open road. You never really kno…
The Water Crisis | National Geographic
The following program is paid content for Finish. Fresh water—we can’t live without it, but it’s running out fast. We call this the bathtub ring, and the reservoir has dropped 120 feet in the last 20 years. Now I’m tracking down innovators who are trying…
Kathryn Minshew at Startup School NY 2014
Next you’re gonna hear from Kathryn Minshew. Kathryn is the CEO and founder of The Muse. So, The Muse is a job discovery tool that’s helping one million people a month find the career, find careers at awesome companies. So, Kathryn has heard me say this b…