On November 26, 2018, NASA is expected to land its newest lander, known as Mars Insight – Insight stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport.  The name indicates some of the primary scientific objectives of this newest lander.  Among the goals are studies of plate tectonics on Mars, transport of heat through the Martian crust, and continuous monitoring of Martian Weather.   Take a listen to this brief episode – and head over to http://go.nasa.gov/InSightToolkit in order to check out information from Insight!  Here is the link for this 7 minute podcast – enjoy!

Update:  Landing successful!  Here are a couple shots from the control room just after touchdown, and after the receipt of the information that the lander is in good shape.  Also included, the first photo from the surface of Mars from Insight – the dust that’s interfering with the image is on a transparent dustcover on the lander’s camera that will be removed in a few hours.