The InSight spacecraft will be a static lander that will carry instruments to investigate Mars' deep interior.

 

Scientists say this will give them a clearer idea of how the rocky planets formed - the Earth included.

 

InSight beat two other proposals in a competition to find Nasa's next relatively² low-cost mission.

 

This so-called Discovery class of endeavour is cost-capped at $425m (£270m; 345m euros), although that figure does not include the rocket to launch the spacecraft.

 

InSight stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic³ Investigations⁴, Geodesy and Heat Transport.

 

It will be led from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

 

The design of the lander leans heavily on the successful Phoenix probe put on the Red Planet in 2008. But although the 2016 venture will look very similar, it will carry very different instrumentation.

 

A seismic（地震的） experiment will listen for "marsquakes" and use this information to map the boundaries between the rock layers inside Earth's neighbour. 

 

It will determine if the planet has a liquid or solid core, and provide some clues as to why its surface is not divided up into tectonic plates as on Earth.

 

Key components⁵ of this package will come from France and the UK.

 

InSight will also push a German-built thermal⁶ probe into the surface to gauge⁷ Mars' temperature profile. This will reveal how the planet is cooling.

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