What’s Ahead For NASA’s Martian Robot Geologist?

The red planet just go another robot inhabitant. NASA’s Mars InSight lander touched down on November 26 after a six month trip through our solar system.

The mission aims to understand what’s going on UNDER the martian surface using a suite of geological and seismic tools. It will spend the next few weeks surveying it’s landing site before starting its science mission, but in the meantime, the spacecraft has been beaming back tantalizing new pictures from the surface of Mars.

So what do scientists hope to learn from InSight? Emily Lakdawalla joins the podcast to answer that question. She’s a geologist and also the Senior Editor at the Planetary Society. Emily was at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab during the landing and joins us via Skype today to talk about the mission ahead for InSight.