Mars INSIGHT: NASA'S Next Mission To The Red Planet

NASA's next Mars lander, InSight, is set to launch May 5 at the earliest from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and it will bring a trio of powerful instruments to measure the wobbles, quakes and heat that reveal what's going on deep inside the Red Planet — and perhaps offer insight into how Earth formed, as well.

"The goal of InSight is nothing less than to better understand the birth of the Earth, the birth of the planet that we live on," said Bruce Banerdt, InSight's principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. "And we're going to do that by going to Mars, which seems a little bit counterintuitive."

Credit: NASA JPL