Vandenberg Air Force Base: An Atlas 5 rocket soared into space early onSaturday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, carrying NASA`sfirst robotic lander designed for exploring the deep interior of anotherplanet on its voyage to Mars.
The Mars InSight probe lifted off from the central California coast at 4:05am PDT, treating early-rising residents across a wide swath of the state tothe luminous pre-dawn spectacle of the first US interplanetary spacecraftto be launched over the Pacific.
The lander will be carried aloft for NASA and its Jet Propulsion Laboratory(JPL) atop a two-stage, 19-story Atlas 5 rocket from the fleet of UnitedLaunch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co.
The payload will be released about 90 minutes after launch on a 301 millionmile (484 million km) flight to Mars. It is due to reach its destination insix months, landing on a broad, smooth plain close to the planet`s equatorcalled the Elysium Planitia.
That will put InSight roughly 373 miles (600 km) from the 2012 landing siteof the car-sized Mars rover Curiosity.
The new 800-pound (360-kg) spacecraft marks the 21st US-launched Martianexploration, dating to the Mariner fly-by missions of the 1960s. Nearly twodozen other Mars missions have been launched by other nations.
Once settled, the solar-powered InSight will spend two years – about oneMartian year – plumbing the depths of the planet`s interior for clues tohow Mars took form and, by extension, the origins of the Earth and otherrocky planets.
InSight`s primary instrument is a French-built seismometer, designed todetect the slightest vibrations from “marsquakes” around the planet. Thedevice, to be placed on the surface by the lander`s robot arm, is sosensitive it can measure a seismic wave just one-half the radius of ahydrogen atom.
Scientists expect to see a dozen to 100 marsquakes over the course of themission, producing data to help them deduce the depth, density andcomposition of the planet`s core, the rocky mantle surrounding it and theoutermost layer, the crust.
The Viking probes of the mid-1970s were equipped with seismometers, too,but they were bolted to the top of the landers, a design that provedlargely ineffective.
Apollo missions to the moon brought seismometers to the lunar surface aswell, detecting thousands of moonquakes and meteorite impacts. But InSightis expected to yield the first meaningful data on planetary seismic tremorsbeyond Earth.
InSight also will be fitted with a German-made drill to burrow as much as16 feet (5 meters) underground, pulling behind it a rope-like thermal probeto measure heat flowing from inside the planet.
Meanwhile, a special transmitter on the lander will send radio signals backto Earth, tracking Mars` subtle rotational wobble to reveal the size of theplanet`s core and possibly whether it remains molten.
Hitching a ride aboard the same rocket that launches InSight will be a pairof miniature satellites called CubeSats, which will fly to Mars on theirown paths behind the lander in a first deep-space test of that technology.