Commodore Sloat

Picture of the day

InSight was an American spacecraft mission launched by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, consisting of a robotic lander designed to study the deep interior of the planet Mars. Launched in 2018, the mission was active until late 2022, when contact with the lander was lost. InSight's objectives were to place a seismometer on the surface of Mars to measure seismic activity and provide accurate three-dimensional models of the planet's interior, and to measure internal heat transfer using a heat probe to study Mars's early geological evolution. This was intended to provide a new understanding of how the Solar System's terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) as well as the Moon formed and evolved. This 2015 photograph shows three technicians working on the InSight lander with its solar panels deployed during preflight testing in a cleanroom in Denver, Colorado.Photograph credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Lockheed Martin