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| insignia = InSight Mission Logo (transparent).png | insignia_caption = ''InSight'' mission logo | insignia_alt = | insignia_size = 100px }} ''InSight'' is a robotic Mars lander planned for launch in March 2016.〔(NASA will send robot drill to Mars in 2016 ), Washington Post, By Brian Vastag, Monday, 20 August 2012〕 The name is a backronym for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport.〔 The mission's objective is to place a stationary lander equipped with a seismometer and heat transfer probe on the surface of Mars to study its early geological evolution. This would bring new understanding of the Solar System's terrestrial planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars — and Earth’s Moon. By reusing technology from the Mars ''Phoenix'' lander, which successfully landed on Mars in 2008, it is expected that the cost and risk will be reduced.〔 ''InSight'' was initially known as GEMS (Geophysical Monitoring Station), but its name was changed in early 2012 at the request of NASA.〔(JPL changes name of Mars mission proposal - Glendale NewsPress )〕 Out of 28 proposals from 2010,〔(NASA/JPL - New NASA Mission To take First Look Deep Inside Mars )〕 it was one of the three Discovery Program finalists receiving US$3 million in May 2011 to develop a detailed concept study.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/may/HQ_11-132_Future_Plantary.html )〕 In August 2012, ''InSight'' was selected for development and launch.〔 Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) with participation from scientists from several countries, the mission is cost-capped at US$425 million, not including launch vehicle funding. On 19 May 2014, NASA announced that construction of the lander began. Later, on 27 May 2015, NASA announced that testing of the lander began. ==Objectives== ''InSight'' will place a single stationary lander on Mars to study its deep interior and address a fundamental issue of planetary and Solar System science: understanding the processes that shaped the rocky planets of the inner Solar System (including Earth) more than four billion years ago. ''InSight'' primary objective is to study the earliest evolutionary history of the processes that shaped Mars. By studying the size, thickness, density and overall structure of Mars' core, mantle and crust, as well as the rate at which heat escapes from the planet's interior, ''InSight'' will provide a glimpse into the evolutionary processes of all of the rocky planets in the inner Solar System.〔 The rocky inner planets share a common ancestry that begins with a process called accretion. As the body increases in size, its interior heats up and evolves to become a terrestrial planet, containing a core, mantle and crust. Despite this common ancestry, each of the terrestrial planets is later shaped and molded through a poorly understood process called differentiation. ''InSight'' mission's goal is to improve understanding of this process and, by extension, terrestrial evolution, by measuring the planetary building blocks shaped by differentiation: a terrestrial planet's core, mantle and crust.〔 The mission will determine if there is any seismic activity, measure the amount of heat flow from the interior, estimate the size of Mars' core and whether the core is liquid or solid. This data would be the first of its kind on Mars.〔 The mission's secondary objective is to conduct an in-depth study of geophysics, tectonic activity and the effect of meteorite impacts on Mars, which could provide knowledge about such processes on Earth. Crust thickness, mantle velocity, core radius and density, and seismic activity should experience a measured accuracy increase on the order 3X to 10X compared to current data.〔 In terms of fundamental processes shaping planetary formation, Mars contains the most in-depth and accurate historical record, because it is big enough to have undergone the earliest accretion and internal heating processes that shaped the terrestrial planets, but small enough to have retained signs of those processes.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「InSight」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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