The Mariner 4 probe was launched in 1964 and traveled toward Mars. It was the first satellite to take up close pictures of another planet.
Credit: NASA

On Earth, the blue and green planet of our solar system, we are celebrating Red Planet Day today, November 28. The red planet is a nickname for Mars, the fourth planet from the sun. On November 28, 1964, NASA launched the first mission toward Mars, with the Mariner 4 probe. We call it “the Red Planet” because the surface of Mars has a reddish color due to the weathered iron-rich minerals present in the Martian dust and surface rocks. The iron oxidizes creating rust. We should call it the rusty planet! Many ancient peoples associated the planet with war and conflict because of its blood-red appearance. Indeed, Mars is the Latin name for the ancient Roman god of war.

Mars, like Earth, has clouds in its atmosphere and deposits of ice at its poles. But unlike Earth, Mars has little to no liquid water on its surface. The rustlike color of Mars comes from the large amount of iron in the planet’s soil.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

Humans have been studying Mars for centuries. Visible from Earth with the unaided eye, Mars has always captivated us! Of all the planets in our solar system, Mars has the surface environment that most closely resembles that of Earth. Mars has weather and seasons and landforms that appear familiar. Salty water may flow just below the planet’s surface. Like Earth, the sun, and the rest of the solar system, Mars is about 4.6 billion years old.

Mars has a special place in popular culture, one that is unique among the planets. This fascination with Mars probably developed because the planet is relatively close to and similar to Earth. Early observations with Earth-based telescopes inspired popular speculation that Mars was home to all kinds of life, even alien civilizations. Many works of science fiction have played upon these ideas, showing humans visiting Mars or malevolent Martians invading Earth.

A Martian landscape includes jagged rocks, sand dunes, and hazy clouds. The image, taken by the United States rover Curiosity, has been adjusted to show the natural color of the planet, as it would appear to an observer on the surface.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

In the 1960’s, the U.S. Mariner spacecraft showed Mars to be a cold, desert planet devoid of visible life. But Mars continues to fascinate people with hints of past surface water and the possibility that microscopic life once existed or still exists there. Experts also view Mars as the next likely target for human space exploration and perhaps even as a stepping stone to exploring the rest of the solar system.

Robotic spacecraft began detailed observation of Mars in the 1960′s. The United States launched to Mars the Mariner 4 probe in 1964 and Mariners 6 and 7 in 1969. The pictures they returned showed a barren surface, covered with craters like those on the moon. There was no sign of liquid water or life. The spacecraft observed few of the planet’s most interesting features because they happened to fly by only heavily cratered regions. But when Mariner 9 went into orbit around Mars in 1971, people’s view of Mars completely changed. Mariner 9 mapped about 80 percent of Mars and made the first discoveries of the planet’s canyons and volcanoes. It also found the first evidence for water, taking photographs of the outflow channels and valley networks.

The Artemis I Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on June 14, 2022.
Credit: KSC/NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is one step closer to getting astronauts back on the moon after the Artemis-1 mission launch today, November 16th, 2022. Artemis-1 is the first mission in the three-ply plan to establish a better understanding of the moon en route to landing on Mars. The un-crewed Orion spacecraft will be launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, on the Space Launch System rocket, NASA’s newest and most powerful rocket. The mission has been delayed due to Hurricane Ian and tropical storm Nicole.

The program is named after Artemis, the goddess of hunting and the moon in Greek mythology. Artemis was the twin of Apollo, the god of light. The Apollo program was NASA’s first mission to land on the moon. The Orion spacecraft is named after Orion, a handsome and energetic hunter in Greek mythology. He was a giant who could walk through the sea and on its surface. In one myth, Artemis set Orion in the sky as a constellation after his death. Orion the Hunter, is a brilliant constellation that includes two of the brightest stars in the sky.

The mission is set to send Orion beyond the moon, launching it into orbit around the moon, before returning to Earth. Orion will travel 1.3 million miles (2.1 million kilometers) over the course of 42 days while orbiting the moon. Orion’s return to Earth will be the fastest and hottest planned spacecraft return in history. It is expected to land in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego, California, on Oct. 10. The Orion spacecraft is planned to carry astronauts to the International Space Station and, eventually, to the moon and Mars. The craft is designed to sustain astronauts during a long mission into deep space and return them safely to Earth.

NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft roll out to the Launch Complex on Aug. 16, 2022, ahead of the scheduled launch of the Artemis 1 mission on Aug. 29, 2022.

Although on this trip, Orion is heading into space without passengers. the Orion spacecraft has many advanced features to support an astronaut crew on an extended mission into space. These features include unique systems for propulsion and flight control. Astronauts will be carried in Orion’s Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV). The CEV is equipped with advanced heat shields to withstand the temperatures generated by the high velocities required to launch the craft into deep space and to reenter Earth’s atmosphere upon return. Orion cannot make it to space on its own, it requires a push from a heavy-lift rocket. That is where the Space Launch System (SLS) helps out. The SLS uses solid-fuel rocket boosters to carry heavy loads into space. The SLS is the most powerful rocket ever built for launching a space exploration vehicle. 

The first successful unpiloted test flight of the Orion spacecraft took place in 2014. The Orion CEV was launched on an older model Delta IV heavy rocket and orbited Earth twice before it splashed down and was recovered in the Pacific Ocean. A second test flight, in 2018, also used the Delta IV heavy rocket because of delays in the development of the SLS. Future unpiloted test flights are planned to test various components of the Orion spacecraft. Orion missions with astronauts are expected to take place later, in the 2020’s. The last manned mission to the moon was in 1972 when the Apollo 17 mission completed the longest lunar landing.

Jessica Watkins
Credit: NASA

American astronaut and geologist Jessica Watkins is making history this month. She is the first Black woman selected for an extended mission in space. Watkins and three other astronauts launched aboard a new SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft named Freedom atop a Falcon 9 rocket on April 27, 2022. Once the crew arrives, they will work and live aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The ISS is a large, inhabited Earth satellite that more than 15 nations are operating in space. Watkins is set to work aboard the station for six months. On the ISS, she will work at the microgravity laboratory and serve as the team’s mission specialist.

Jessica Andrea Watkins was born in Gaithersburg, Maryland, on May 14, 1988. Her family later moved to Lafayette, Colorado. She enrolled at Stanford University in California, in 2006.  Watkins led Stanford’s rugby team to win the 2008 national championship. Watkins was a member of the United States Women’s Eagles Sevens Rugby team, competing in the 2009 Women’s Sevens Rugby World Cup in Dubai. Watkins earned her bachelor’s degree in geological and environmental sciences from Stanford University in 2010.

Watkins studied and worked extremely hard to reach her new career in space. Watkins earned a doctorate degree in geology at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2015. Watkins conducted post-doctoral research at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). At UCLA, she studied landslides on Mars. At Caltech, she helped plan missions for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Curiosity rover.

As an undergraduate, Watkins participated in an internship for NASA at the Ames Research Center outside of San Jose, California. She compared simulated Martian soils with data gathered by the Phoenix Mars Lander.  In 2009, Watkins served as the chief geologist for a simulated mission at the Mars Desert Research Station outside of Hanksville, Utah. As a graduate student, she interned for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. In 2017, Watkins was selected for astronaut training. In 2019, Watkins participated as an aquanaut in a simulated space mission at the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) Aquarius habitat, on the ocean floor off the coast of Key Largo, Florida. NASA has also selected Watkins as a crew member for the Artemis mission to the moon’s surface.

This rock, called “Máaz” (the Navajo word for “Mars”), is the first feature of scientific interest to be studied by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

When you’re exploring a planet, you have to name things. It’s a great way to memorialize your discoveries, but it also prevents confusion: are you going to study This Rock, That Rock, or The Other Rock?

The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) mission Mars 2020 is hard at work exploring Mars. The mission’s rover, Perseverance, landed on Feb. 18, 2021, in Jezero Crater. The mission planners have been naming important surface features in the Navajo language. This decision wasn’t planned before the rover landed, but came about by happy circumstance.

Landing on another solar system body is tough. Mission planners can guide a lander to a general destination, but they cannot pinpoint an exact landing site. Mars 2020 mission planners could guide Perseverance to Jezero Crater, but they could not know where in the 28-mile (45-kilometer) wide crater the rover was going to land. Therefore, mission planners studied the entire crater to prepare for landing. They divided the crater into several sections, naming each after a place on Earth—including U.S. national monuments—that the section resembled in some way.

Perseverance landed within the section that planners had named after Canyon de Chelly National Monument. This national monument, known for its huge, colorful, steep-walled canyons, lies entirely within the Navajo reservation. The Navajo are one of the largest Native American groups in the United States. The Navajo reservation, which covers 16 million acres (6.5 million hectares), is the nation’s biggest reservation. It includes parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah.

Canyon de Chelly National Monument (“Tséyi’” in Navajo) in Arizona is located on Navajo Nation land. Members of NASA’s Perseverance rover team, in collaboration with the Navajo Nation, has been naming features of scientific interest with words in the Navajo language.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s Mars mission scientists informally name important features to make them easier to identify. Mars 2020 mission scientists were inspired by the name of their landing site to nickname features in the Navajo language. They teamed up with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) scientist Aaron Yazzie, who is Navajo, to seek permission from the Navajo Nation. The nation’s government approved the idea and developed a list of potential names. The first name to be used was Máaz, the Navajo word for Mars, for a rock near the landing site. Navajo officials also included the translation for Perseverance: Ha’ahóni.

Perseverance has to be “taught” the language, since the computer languages the rover uses cannot process the special characters and diacritical marks used in the written Navajo language. Mars 2020 team members are working to develop better transliterations using the English alphabet.

This is not the first time the Navajo language has played an outsized role in United States history. During the United States’ involvement in World War II (1939-1945), Navajo radio operators sent secret messages using a code based on the Navajo language. At the time, Navajo was an unwritten language known to few people outside of the Navajo Nation. Its complex structure, difficult pronunciation, and singsong qualities made it nearly impossible to decipher. Although Imperial Japanese forces could overhear the messages, they never managed to decode them. The Navajo radio operators, called code talkers, have been honored for their service in the war.

Mars 2020 has shed its proverbial training wheels and is breaking new ground in the exploration of the Red Planet. The helicopter Ingenuity, another part of the mission, conducted its first flight on April 19. Engineers are now pushing Ingenuity further, conducting longer, more challenging flights. The craft’s performance will gather valuable information for future Mars flyers. Perseverance’s robotic arm began conducting science on May 11. As the mission continues to explore, planners will continue to nickname features in the Navajo language—a tribute to the Navajo people, their culture, and the land they call home.

NASA’s Mars 2020 rover Perseverance
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Mars is one of the most difficult destinations to arrive safely at in the solar system, but you might not know it if you have been paying attention to the news lately. Earthlings are a perfect three-for-three on Mars missions this February. Two countries saw their first missions ever arrive at the Red Planet last week. Then yesterday, the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) landed the Mars 2020 rover Perseverance on the surface of Mars. This flotilla of missions to the Red Planet was facilitated by a favorable alignment in the middle of 2020 that brought the planet close to Earth.

On February 9, a spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) arrived in orbit around Mars. The orbiter, called Hope or Amal, will map Martian weather on a planet-wide scale. Such mapping has never been attempted before. UAE became just the fifth country to reach the planet. All systems look good at the moment, but Hope is due to enter the orbit from which it will conduct its mapping in May. At that point, engineers will know for sure if the probe will be able to accomplish its mission.

Hot on Hope’s heels was an ambitious mission sent by the China National Space Administration (CNSA). The mission, called Tianwen-1, went into orbit around Mars the next day. The mission consists of an orbiter, a lander, and a rover. The lander and rover will attempt a landing in a few months. If CNSA successfully deploys Tianwen-1, China will become the third country to land a spacecraft on Mars and just the second to land a rover on Mars.

The last—but certainly not least—to arrive was Perseverance. The rocket carrying the beefy rover blasted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida on July, 30, 2020. Perseverance is the largest rover ever sent to Mars. It’s the size of a small automobile and weighs over 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) on Earth.

Unlike China and the UAE, the United States is a Mars veteran. NASA has landed several successful missions there, including the still-operational sibling craft of Perseverance, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover Curiosity.

The design of Perseverance is based on that of Curiosity, which has been exploring Mars since 2012. Engineers used many extra components that were originally created as backups for Curiosity in case of manufacturing defects in the originals. But Perseverance is more than just a pile of spare parts. Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) scientists and engineers modified—and beefed up—the design to fit Perseverance’s mission. Perseverance is about 5 inches (13 centimeters) longer and 278 pounds (126 kilograms) heavier than Curiosity.

No matter how many successful missions are under a space agency’s belt, getting a spacecraft to Mars is a heart-pounding ordeal. Landing on the Red Planet is especially challenging. Mars is a large planet, so its gravity pulls spacecraft towards it at high speed. It lacks a thick atmosphere like that of Earth, however, that spacecraft could use to slow down. Furthermore, retrorockets placed on the rover would scour the ground near the landing site and contaminate it with rocket exhaust.

JPL has developed a complex of system to land a large rover on the Martian surface, which was first used with MSL. A parachute slowed the craft after it entered the Martian atmosphere. A set of rockets then fired to hover the craft above the surface. Then, Perseverance was lowered to the ground on a tether. Mission planners call this complicated ride through the atmosphere, filled with opportunities for mission-ending disaster, “the seven minutes of terror.”

Perseverance touched down in Jezero Crater. Billions of years ago, the crater held a lake that was fed by a river system. Perseverance will explore this ancient river delta and search for signs of past life there.

Perseverance carries many sophisticated scientific instruments that will enable it study the geology and climate of the region. The rover is equipped with a special drill and sample vials. After studying the rock samples it has drilled, it will place them in sealed vials and cache (stow) them on the surface. Scientists hope to recover the cached vials and send them to Earth in an ambitious sample return mission in a decade or so.

Other special features included an upgraded autonomous driving package, which will enable Perseverance to pick its way through obstacles on its own to reach a target, and a small helicopter drone called Ingenuity that will look to demonstrate the first powered flight on a solar system body other than Earth. Expect to hear about more exciting discoveries—and see more stunning pictures of Mars—in the months and years ahead.

May 20, 2019

What do you call an earthquake on Mars? A marsquake! For the first time, scientists working with the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) think they have detected an actual temblor on the red planet.

Scientists think they have detected marsquakes on Mars, the fourth planet from the sun. Credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

At the end of 2018, NASA’s InSight probe deployed a specially-built seismometer called Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) to the surface of Mars. (InSight is short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport. InSight launched from Earth in May 2018 and landed on Mars in late November.) On April 6, 2019, SEIS picked up faint vibrations that were not caused by wind or the movement of InSight’s robotic arm. The signal was faint, with a low-level magnitude between 1 and 2 on the Richter scale. On Earth, such a weak quake would go unnoticed. On Mars, however, InSight was there to feel it.

Mars is the third body on which humans have recorded seismic activity, after Earth and the moon. On Earth, quakes are caused by the bending and grinding of huge tectonic plates, which float on layers of soft rock and magma and hold the planet’s oceans and continents. Mars does not have tectonic plates. Marsquakes are likely caused by the shrinking of the planet’s interior, which itself is caused by the slow cooling of its core.

NASA’s InSight probe has been studying the surface of Mars since late November 2018. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

While detecting marsquakes is exciting, readings from SEIS might also shed light on the structure of the red planet. Scientists have reason to think that Mars, like Earth, has an interior composed of a rocky outer crust, a soft mantle, a liquid outer core, and a solid inner core. But they do not know how thick each of the layers are. Seismic waves change direction slightly when passing through core layers. If scientists know the source of the seismic waves, they can get an idea of the kinds and sizes of layers the waves had to pass through to reach the seismometer. Scientists can then create a more accurate map of the Martian interior and gain insight into the structure of all rocky planets—including those in our solar system and those orbiting stars millions of light-years away.

InSight has many instruments in addition to SEIS. The probe also serves as the only weather station on another planet. Sensors track the brisk wind gusts, low pressures, and frigid temperatures of Elysium Planitia, a vast plain near the Martian equator. On May 11, the temperature climbed to -4 °F (-20 °C) during the day, but plummeted to -148 °F (-100 °C) during the Martian night. Wind speeds topped out at 32 miles (51 kilometers) per hour.

April 8, 2019

After nearly 15 years on the surface of Mars, the Opportunity rover died as it lived: studying its adopted home planet. The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) officially ended the rover’s mission in February 2019, months after the craft was silenced by a dust storm.

The NASA Mars rover Opportunity studied the red planet from January 2004 until the summer of 2018. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell University, Maas Digital LLC

Opportunity and its twin vehicle, Spirit, together made up the Mars Exploration Rover Mission. They were launched in 2003 to study the history of water on the red planet. The golf-cart-sized rovers carried scientific instruments created by teams of scientists and engineers from the United States and Europe.

Spirit and Opportunity were each designed for just 90-day missions. But both continued to gather information on the surface of Mars without any major setbacks for more than five years. In early 2009, Spirit became permanently trapped in a bed of loose Martian soil, ending that rover’s exploring career. Finally accepting its loss, NASA officially ended Spirit’s mission in 2011.

Opportunity landed in January 2004 in Meridiani Planum, a broad plain on the surface of Mars. Planners chose the site because it was known to contain hematite. Hematite is an iron-bearing mineral. On Earth, hematite generally forms in the presence of water. In 2013, Opportunity detected certain clay minerals that form only in the presence of water. This discovery was proof that liquid water once existed on the surface of Mars. This finding was confirmed by other Mars missions, such as NASA’s larger Curiosity rover, sent to Mars in 2011. Opportunity went on to learn that the water was similar to bodies of water on Earth, allowing for the possibility of life on Mars.

Huge dust storms occasionally blanket the surface of Mars. A particularly intense storm occurred in mid-2018, causing NASA to lose contact with Opportunity. The dust blocked out the sun and covered the rover’s solar panels, making it impossible for Opportunity to keep its core systems warm. Even after the skies cleared, there was no response from the rover. The bitterly cold temperatures on Mars—about -80 °F (-60 °C) on average—can damage and destroy electronics.

The end of Opportunity is not the end of humankind’s robotic presence on Mars. Curiosity continues to roll along. InSight, a non-mobile lander also launched by NASA, is currently studying the interior structure of Mars. And in 2021, two new rovers will launch: NASA’s Mars 2020 rover and Rosalind Franklin, a rover developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Russia’s state space agency, Roscosmos. (Rosalind Franklin was a British chemist famous for her studies of molecules and crystals.) The new rovers will try to find out if Mars held life at some point in its distant past. Thanks to the hard work of Opportunity and the mission’s engineers and scientists, we know it is a possibility.

September 10, 2018

One planet in our solar system might be a little wetter than we previously thought. A team of Italian scientists recently found evidence that a lake of liquid water most likely exists on Mars, buried deep beneath the planet’s southern polar ice cap. The team published its findings on July 25, 2018, in the journal Science.

Italian scientists recently found evidence of what they believe to be a liquid water lake beneath the southern polar ice cap of Mars, the fourth planet from the sun. Credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

Mars is a very cold place. On average, the surface of the planet is about -80 °F (-60 °C). As on Earth, however, the poles are even colder. Both poles of Mars feature permanent caps of water ice that are more than 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) thick. In addition, the southern cap has a roughly 25-foot (8-meter) thick permanent covering of frozen carbon dioxide. The northern cap has a diameter of about 625 miles (1,000 kilometers), and the southern cap has a diameter of about 220 miles (350 kilometers). In the Martian winter, the caps expand as layers of carbon dioxide frost condense from the atmosphere.

Images such as this one, showing curved depressions in Mars’s Utopia Planitia region, prompted the search for subterranean water with ground-penetrating radar. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

The team of scientists analyzed data from the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS), an instrument aboard the European Space Agency (ESA) probe Mars Express. Mars Express has been studying the surface of Mars since 2004. MARSIS is a ground-penetrating radar device. Ground-penetrating radar can detect underground features and objects beneath rock and ice. The radar waves reflect off liquid water, however, and for years MARSIS has returned many images with this tell-tale reflection beneath the planet’s south pole. At last, after ruling out other possibilities, the scientists concluded that the radar had found a triangular lake basin about 12 miles (19 kilometers) wide and 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) deep.

The Martian lake might be similar to Lake Vostok and other subglacial lakes on Earth. Lake Vostok, the largest lake in Antarctica, lies beneath 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) of ice, has been isolated for 35 million years, and has temperatures below the normal freezing point of water. But life still likely exists there. If life exists on Mars, it could likely be found in such subglacial lakes. The odds of finding life there are still long, however. The Martian lake would be dozens of degrees below the normal freezing point of water and filled with salts toxic to life on Earth.

As scientists pinch and probe Mars for life, they are also eager to search for life beneath other planetary ice in our solar system. Europa and Enceladus, moons of Jupiter and Saturn, have warm oceans beneath their icy exteriors, and present the best possible chances for extraterrestrial life. The search for life will involve drilling through ice, however, an incredibly complex task even here on Earth. Engineers will have to design a remotely operated drilling system that can withstand the stresses of launch, spaceflight, and landing; drill through massive layers of ice using only batteries or nuclear power; and capture, analyze, and return data to Earth—quite a list! The testing for such a drilling system will begin on our own planet’s subglacial lakes.

June 7, 2018

Last month, on May 5, the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched a new Mars probe called Insight from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. InSight is short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport. InSight, a probe that will study the formation of Mars, is NASA’s first interplanetary mission launched from the west coast of the United States. All previous such launches took place at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

This artist’s rendition shows the InSight lander operating on the surface of Mars. The probe is scheduled to land on Mars on Nov. 26, 2018. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The InSight mission cost just $814 million, a relatively small sum in the multibillion-dollar science of space exploration. The bargain probe will break new ground, however, quite literally, by drilling into the Martian surface. It will sample temperatures, measure the magnetic field, and record seismic levels, all to help scientists understand the planet’s formation. The data may also shed light on the formation of Earth and our solar system.

A NASA Atlas V rocket carrying InSight breaks through the clouds above Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on May 5, 2018. Credit: Cory Huston, NASA

Earth has three major layers: the crust, the mantle, and the core. Planetary scientists think our solar system’s other rocky planets—Mercury, Venus, and Mars—also have these layers. Scientists are unsure, however, how thick the layers are in the other planets. Earth has churned itself up through the process of plate tectonics, changing the chemical makeup and size of its layers over time. But Mars, the fourth planet from the sun, has experienced much less seismic activity. The planet’s present structure, then, should somewhat resemble its original composition when the solar system was formed.

Beginning in late November 2018, NASA’s InSight probe will study the formation of Mars, the fourth planet from the sun. Credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

InSight carries three instruments vital to its mission. The Seismic Experiment Interior Structure (SEIS) sensor will study seismic waves from marsquakes (the Martian equivalent of earthquakes) to determine the structure of the interior of Mars. The Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP³) will drill down almost 15 feet (5 meters) below the Martian surface—the deepest extraterrestrial excavation to date. As it drills, HP³ will record temperature changes to see how much heat remains from Mars’s formation billions of years ago. Scientists can determine the age of rocks, fossils, and other objects by measuring the radioactive elements in them, a science called radiogeology. A third InSight instrument will measure Mars’s magnetic field.

In an unusual arrangement, a robotic arm will move SEIS and HP³ from docks on the body of the lander to the surface of Mars. Tethers will control and power the instruments. Other than that, InSight’s design is pretty standard. Engineers reused much of the design of NASA’s Pheonix lander, which, in 2008, studied the history of water on Mars. By reusing this successful design, engineers saved many millions of dollars on the mission.

Two CubeSats (miniature satellites) hitched a ride on InSight’s rocket and are also traveling to Mars. The CubeSats are the first such satellites to venture beyond Earth’s orbit, and they will help transfer data from InSight during the probe’s landing.

InSight is scheduled to land on Mars on Nov. 26, 2018. Despite NASA’s strong recent record for Mars missions and the use of the proven Phoenix platform, success is far from guaranteed. Over the years, nearly two-thirds of all Mars missions have failed before completing their planned observations.

May 15, 2017

This week’s mythology star, Mars, the god of war, held a special place in the hearts of the ancient Romans—not because of the god’s warlike nature but because the Romans considered him the father of the legendary founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus.

Mars, the Roman god of war, was known as Ares in Greek mythology. Credit: © INTERFOTO/Alamy Images

The Romans did not always think of Mars as a war god. Originally, they worshiped him as the god of farmland and fertility. They named the first month of their crop-growing season after him. Known by the Romans as Martius (our March), that month was also the beginning of the Roman year.

After they came into contact with the Greeks, the Romans gave Mars the characteristics of the Greek god of war, Ares. Over time, Mars became associated principally with war and conquest. The Romans offered sacrifices to Mars before and after battles.

However, one of the most famous stories about Mars does not involve war at all—or at least not armies in conflict. The tale concerns the god’s affair with Venus, the goddess of love. Possessed of a dazzling beauty, Venus was married to Vulcan, who was considered the least attractive of the gods. Vulcan was the blacksmith to the gods as well as the god of fire, metalworking, and skilled craftwork in general.

According to one version of the story, the sun witnessed a secret romantic meeting of Mars and Venus. Shocked by the affair, the sun told Vulcan about it. Vulcan immediately prepared a trap for the lovers. He crafted a huge net made of a metal that was incredibly strong but so fine that it could not be seen. Vulcan took the net and arranged it around the bed in his and Venus’s bedchamber. Before long, Venus and Mars met for another romantic tryst. As they embraced, the net closed on them, and they were trapped—caught in the midst of their affair. Then Vulcan, hoping to shame the lovers, showed other gods into the bedroom to see the lovers snared in the net. However, the gods did not cry “shame” or berate the lovers as he hoped they would. Instead, the gods laughed and laughed at the sight, and delightedly told the story again and again. Through the years, besides being a popular tale among the Roman gods, the story of the love affair between Venus and Mars became a favorite subject for poets and painters here on Earth.

In some ways, Mars lives on. In addition to having the third month of our calendar named after him, his is the name given to the fourth planet of our solar system. The planet Mars can be seen with the unaided eye and was known to ancient observers. As they gazed upon the blood-red planet, the Romans associated it with war and conflict and so they named it after Mars, their god of war.

And by the way, the next time you hear a march or the martial music of a military band, maybe give a thought to Mars. After all, the words march and martial are both based on his name.