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NASA Announces InSight Mars Planetary Science Mission
NASA today announced the selection of a Discovery Class mission to Mars called the InSight mission. This telecon has remarks about the mission and questions from the press.
The panelists for the briefing are:
-- John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator, NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington
-- James Green, director, NASA's Planetary Science Division, Washington
NASA has selected a new mission, set to launch in 2016, that will take the first look into the deep interior of Mars to see why the Red Planet evolved so differently from Earth as one of our solar system's rocky planets.
The new mission, named InSight, will place instruments on the Martian surface to investigate whether the core of Mars is solid or liquid like Earth's and why Mars' crust is not divided into tectonic plates that drift like Earth's. Detailed knowledge of the interior of Mars in comparison to Earth will help scientists understand better how terrestrial planets form and evolve.