InSight lander on Mars. Illustration of NASA's InSight lander deployed on the surface of Mars. The InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) lander is designed for studying the interior of Mars (marsquake waves at lower left). The main instruments are the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS, lower left) and the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Probe (HP3, lower right). Other instruments include the grapple, tethers, a pressure inlet, various cameras (ICC and IDC), a robotic arm (IDA), antennas for the RISE (Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment), the Temperature and Winds for InSight (TWINS) sensors, the WTS (Wind and Thermal Shield) for SEIS, and a UHF radio antenna. InSight was launched on 5 May 2018. It successfully landed on Mars in November 2018. |