NASA is about to launch a mission to Mars. But don't get your space suit zipped up just yet: The trip is for a solar-powered lander, not people.
The NASA inspection kit is named InSight, and it's a 794-pound Martian lander. InSight (which stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) is set to blast off for Mars from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base at around 4 a.m. PT on May 5, 2018.
Scientists at NASA say the lander will give the red planet a 4.5-billion-year-overdue "checkup." InSight has three main objectives on Mars: taking the planet's temperature, measuring its size, and monitoring for "marsquakes."
Take a look at what the roughly $828 million mission will do:
SEE ALSO: NASA wants to send humans to Mars in the 2030s — here's the step-by-step timeline
It will take about six months for the InSight lander to travel the roughly 301 million miles from southern California to Martian soil.
NASA says"the launch may be visible in California from Santa Maria to San Diego" if conditions are clear.
InSight will be hoisted aboard an Atlas V rocket along with a couple of tiny, toaster-sized cube satellites that will fly separately to Mars.
It will all weigh about 730,000 pounds when the launch fully fueled and ready for blastoff.
Source: NASA
If everything goes according to plan, InSight will land on Mars on November 26, 2018.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider