spacetoday.net: NASA selects Mars lander for next Discovery mission

NASA selects Mars lander for next Discovery mission

Posted: Wed, Aug 22, 2012, 2:10 PM ET (1810 GMT)
InSight lander illustration (NASA)

NASA announced Monday that it has selected a Mars lander designed to carry out geophysical research as the next mission in its Discovery program of low-cost planetary science missions. InSight, the selected mission, will launch in March 2016 for a landing that September on Mars. The spacecraft, based on the Phoenix Mars Lander mission, will carry instruments to study the planet's interior, including a seismometer and a heat flow instrument that will be deployed by the lander several meters below the surface. InSight beat out missions to a comet and to Saturn's moon Titan to be the next Discovery-class mission, with a cost cap of $425 million excluding launch.