Why is Mars so different from Earth? NASA’s InSight mission will dig deep to find answers
Suzanne Smrekar has been trying to take the temperature of Mars for nearly 25 years. “Understanding the interior of a planet helps us to understand how it formed and evolved, and how the features on the surface came to exist,” said Renee Weber, a member of the InSight science team at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Scientists also want to understand how fast Mars is cooling off and where it is in its “life cycle,” Weber said: “Do you have a hot, active planet, or do you have a cold, dead planet?” Researchers have developed different models for how Mars formed and evolved over time, which they rely on to make inferences about the planet’s past. But most of Mars’ atmosphere — and its surface water — disappeared billions of years ago, and InSight’s third major experiment aims to help researchers understand why. :: As InSight closes in on Mars, Smrekar said it feels both “thrilling and anxiety-producing.” At long last, scientists will look deep inside another planet.
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