InSight

Key facts

Mission & specifications

Mission

InSight was a Mars lander built not to rove or to look outward, but to listen to the planet from the inside. Launched on 5 May 2018, it set down on the flat plain of Elysium Planitia on 26 November 2018 and, rather than driving off, carefully lifted an exquisitely sensitive seismometer onto the ground with its robotic arm — the first working seismometer ever placed on Mars. Over the next four years it detected more than 1,300 'marsquakes'. By timing how their seismic waves echoed through the planet, scientists mapped Mars's hidden interior for the first time, measuring the thickness of its crust, the depth of its mantle, and the surprising size of its large, liquid core. InSight also carried a self-hammering heat probe nicknamed 'the mole', which was meant to burrow five metres down, but the unexpectedly clumpy soil gave it nothing to grip, and it never dug in. The mission's slow enemy was dust: as it gathered on the solar panels, power dwindled inexorably, and after a final image InSight fell silent in December 2022. It had turned Mars from a surface we had walked on into a world whose deep structure we finally understood.

1. 2018Launch toward MarsLaunch

   A lander sets out to study the deep interior of another planet for the first time.

2. 2018Landing in Elysium PlanitiaLanding

   Sets down on a flat plain chosen for a clear view of the planet's interior, not its surface.

3. 2018Seismometer placed on MarsDeployment

   The arm lowers the first working seismometer onto the Martian surface.

4. 2019First marsquake recordedMilestone

   Detects the first of more than 1,300 quakes that probe the planet's depths.

5. 2021Mars's interior mappedMilestone

   Quake echoes reveal the size of the core and the structure of the mantle and crust.

6. 2022Buried by dustMission end

   Dust-covered solar panels end the mission after a final image.

Images

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