NASA’s next robotic explorer is beginning its deep-space voyage to Mars. The lander InSight is set to take off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in the wee hours of Saturday morning, the beginning of a six and a half month journey to the Red Planet. Once there, the little spacecraft will listen for quakes to figure out what Mars is made of.
NASA has a long history of launching to Mars, but this trip to the Red Planet is a bit different: It’s the first interplanetary mission to take off from the West Coast. All of NASA’s previous deep-space explorers have launched from Florida, where rockets fly eastward over the Atlantic and get an extra boost of speed from the rotation of the Earth. However, InSight is pretty small; the Atlas...
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