Nasa InSight: What does the Mars landing hope to find?

By digging beneath the red planet's dusty surface, we could get an incredible look at the whole solar system

Nasa is about to land on Mars. And then have a peek beneath it.

The InSight lander will scratch underneath the red planet's red surface for the first time ever.

In so doing, the space agency hopes to have a look at the mysterious seismic processes happening under the ground. And it could help illuminate mysteries about how the planet formed – and how the rest of the planets surrounding us came to be, as well.

How will we get to the surface?

First, the lander will have to successfully make its way there. Doing so is very perilous: more Mars landers have crashed and failed than have been successful, because of the difficulty of flying through Mars's thin atmosphere.

If the lander successfully touches down on the surface – something that is far from assured – it will get to work delving deep into its new home. It will offer an unprecedented insight into the activity beneath that dusty surface.

Even as the craft makes its way to the ground, engineers will be using their intense practising to ensure that InSight lands so that its sensors can be used. It will be directed so that even if it lands on a rock, or on its side, it will still be able to stick its sensors into the planet and examine it.

Engineers will then decide where they are going to aim those sensors. They will then spend several weeks calibrating them and getting them into place, before they start taking scientific readings.

What will we learn there?

Once they're in, they will start taking what Nasa refers to the as the "planet's pulse". It will do so using a seismometer that picks up waves as they move through the interior of the planet, helping understand how active Mars is and what makes it that way.

As well as taking the pulse, it will collect other vital signs: it will measure the planet's temperature. Using a heat flow probe, it will look at how hot Mars's insides are, allowing us to understand how similar it is to Earth and help explore how both planets came to be.

And it will also watch the way the planet moves, tracking its slight wobble on its axis. Using very precise radio antennas, they will watch that movement, helping understand how it is affected by the sun.

So far, we have studied Mars from afar and on the ground, with telescopes, satellites and landers. By sticking sensors underneath and inside of Mars, Nasa hopes to get an insight into a planet that could one day soon become home to people.

“We’ve studied Mars from orbit and from the surface since 1965, learning about its weather, atmosphere, geology and surface chemistry,” said Lori Glaze, acting director of the Planetary Science Division in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “Now we finally will explore inside Mars and deepen our understanding of our terrestrial neighbour as NASA prepares to send human explorers deeper into the solar system.”