Mission

InSight's main objective will be to gain insight into the earliest history of the processes that shaped Mars. To this end it will study the size, thickness, density and overall structure of the planet's core, mantle, and crust, and determine the rate at which heat is escaping from the planet's interior. In addition, it will shed light on key questions such as whether Mars is seismically active and whether its core is solid or liquid. Furthermore, the mission will seek to undertake a detailed study of the Red Planet's geophysics, tectonic activity and meteorite impacts. The findings could be extrapolated to similar processes on Earth.

The following video shows how, after a six-month voyage through space, the probe will gently touch down on the surface of Mars on 26 November 2018, how the solar panels will be deployed to generate power, and how the seismometer and heat probe will be positioned. In reality, it will take several months before all the equipment has been deployed and checked to ensure that it is functioning properly. The instruments will start regularly gathering and transmitting data from the spring of 2019 onwards.

The seismometer SEIS will first save data to its own (flash semiconductor) memory, which is sufficiently large to store over 50 hours of recordings. Once operating normally, as from spring 2019, the data will be transmitted twice daily to NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN). Depending on the relative positions of Mars and the Earth, the data will either be transmitted directly or via a Mars orbiter.

The DSN is an earth-spanning array of antennas that enable round-the clock communications with space. The antennas, with diameters of between 34 and 70 m, are located near Goldstone (USA), Canberra (Australia) and Madrid (Spain). The DSN transmits the signals via the French space agency, CNES, to the data centre of the Swiss Seismological Service at ETH Zurich, where they are analysed. An entire transfer of data from the SEIS's memory to ETH Zurich will take around one to two hours.