 Hey everyone, last week I took a road trip to Canberra to go to a special event put on by the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex called Exploring Space, Mars and Beyond. My next few space pods will hopefully be a little bit of a mini-series about what I learned from this event, about the past space probes and the next generation of space probes to Mars. This event hosted five NASA speakers and today I'll be focusing on what I learned from Bruce Bernard, the principal investigator of the next NASA mission to Mars called INSIGHT. This is your space pod for May 27, 2015. INSIGHT is designed to find out how rocky planets like Earth and Mars change from being a big homogenous ball of molten metal and rock into a more layered ball of a crust, mantle and a core. We think this happens when metals coagulate and rain down to form a dense core while crystallization of minerals starts to form a mantle and a crust. By taking a few different measurements on Mars, INSIGHT will allow us to narrow down our models about how rocky planets form. INSIGHT will be measuring numerous things on Mars including the thickness and layering in the crust, the layering in the mantle and whether the mantle is a solid or a liquid and it will also look at the core density and the size of the core and whether it's solid or liquid as well. INSIGHT will also look at thermal fluxes in the mantle and will look at seismology on Mars, that is, Marsquakes. So how will INSIGHT measure Marsquakes on Mars? It will carry a seismometer which is basically a mass on a string. When Marsquakes shake the ground, the distance between that mass and the ground changes and we can measure it. These measurements tell us a lot about the material that the quake travelled through. So if a Marsquake originated on the side of Mars opposite to the space probe, the quake waves will travel through the core and we'll be able to tell what material the core might be made of. Actually, the seismometer on INSIGHT is so sensitive it could detect waves crashing on the California coast as the seismometer was being prepared for spaceflight in a clean room in Denver, Colorado. So what will happen if there aren't any Marsquakes on Mars? Well, the seismometer can also be used to detect tides on Mars. Yeah? There's no oceans on Mars, but there are still tides. Phobos, which is one of Mars' moons, pulls the ground as it passes over the Martian surface and we can detect these changes. This is only a weak force pulling the ground by about one to two centimeters, but as we can accurately measure this distance, it can tell us whether the core is solid or liquid because a solid core will resist the pull of Phobos more than a liquid core will. The other cool thing about INSIGHT is that it will actually place its seismometer on the Martian surface. All the other seismometers placed on Mars so far have had it sitting on the deck of their space probe, so about one meter above the ground. Not so good when you want to take measurements of the surface. A robotic arm will be used to place the seismometer on the surface and then it will also take a protective cover, which is basically an upside down wok and place it over the seismometer to protect it from thermal stresses and from the wind. The second cool instrument on INSIGHT is basically a probe that will hammer itself down five meters into the Martian surface. The probe has temperature sensors every 30 centimeters along its length and will measure the temperature gradient in the Martian ground. This will give us an insight into how fast the heat is radiating out from the mantle. If the temperature difference between one end of the probe and the other is very great, this indicates that a large amount of heat is radiating out from the mantle. So how exactly do you hammer into Mars? I'll let Bruce explain. So there's a motor which winds up a cam on a sort of a screw trap. It sort of pulls up a mass against the spring and releases it really quickly. This thing goes snapping down with a lot of force. And then of course, if you're just not doing anything else, you have an equal and opposite reaction. But in this case, we put a softer spring up here so when it recoils back again, it slows it down and the friction on the outside of this casing makes it so it doesn't pop back as far as it went down so you get a neck downward motion. INSIGHT will launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California in March of 2016 for a September 2016 landing. It's actually the first planetary probe to be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base. I'm really excited for the launch of this probe and I hope you are too. Let me know what you think about this really cool space probe by leaving a comment below or via social media and consider sharing this video with your friends so we can dig up a little support for this space probe. Thank you for watching and thank you to the citizens of tomorrow for helping to crowdfund this space pod. If you'd like more information about crowdfunding this show, head over to patreon.com. My name is Lisa Stodzianowski and I'm excited about the INSIGHT space probe gaining an insight into the Earth by going to Mars.