InSight

Deutsch: Einblick / Español: Visión / Português: Visão / Français: Perspicacité / Italiano: Visione /

InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) is a NASA Discovery Program mission that was launched in 2018 to study the deep interior of Mars.

The spacecraft is equipped with a suite of scientific instruments that are used to measure the planet's seismic activity, heat flow, and the planet's rotation and wobble, in order to gain insight into the planet's geology and internal structure. The mission is considered as the first to study the "inner space" of Mars, and it's aiming to understand the processes that shaped the rocky planets, including Earth, more than four billion years ago.

InSight's main scientific instruments are a seismometer, to detect marsquakes and other seismic activity, and a heat probe, which will be used to measure the heat flow from the Martian interior. The spacecraft also carries a suite of other instruments, including a weather station, a magnetometer, and a laser retroreflector, to study the Martian environment and its magnetic field.

One of the interesting results from the mission is that scientists found that the seismic activity on Mars is much quieter than expected, which suggest that the planet's interior is less active than Earth's, and that it cooled off faster after its formation. The mission also placed the first instrument ever on the surface to study Mars’s internal heat production, and InSight data showed that heat is still flowing out of the planet today, but at a much slower rate than previously thought, which support the idea that Mars is a less active planet.

The mission was planned to last for one Martian year, which is roughly two Earth years, but has been extended to continue it's operations and the analysis of the data collected.