Author: Robby Berman / Source: Big Think
- NASA’s new 8-episode podcast series, On a Mission, is a ride-along for its InSight mission to Mars.
- InSight will look beneath the Martian surface for a deeper understanding of its composition and history.
- Each episode makes for a compelling half hour of listening.
It’s called “InSight,” and it’s NASA’s latest spacecraft headed to Mars, scheduled to arrive there on November 29. As always, it’s a dicey affair, with less than half of previous missions having safely reached their destinations. “When things go beautifully it looks easy, but it’s really not easy,” Sue Smrekar, deputy principal investigator for mission, warns. “Any kind of exploration is just not easy or guaranteed — ever.” That’s also what makes a mission exciting.
To share the thrill, NASA has just launched an eight-episode podcast series, On a Mission, that allows anyone to tag along with InSight and the people behind it. You can listen to the podcasts on NASA’s own site, the InSight mission site, Soundcloud, and through Apple Podcasts. On October 29, NASA posted the first two episodes.
There’s even a trailer.
About InSight
Insight is an anagram for “Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport.” Where previous Mar missions have explored the Martian surface, InSight is designed to go deeper, giving Mars “its first thorough checkup since it formed 4.5 billion years ago.” Launching from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base on May 5th, the plan is for the mission to last a little over a year, that is, 708 Martian days, or “sols.
” (That’s 728 Earth days.) The craft carries the usual wealth of instrumentation, chief among them SEIS, HP3, and RISE.SEIS
The
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