InSight Diary: Mars mission emerges from the mists
Prof Tom Pike from Imperial College London is part of the science team on the US-led InSight mission to Mars. His group has supplied seismometers that will enable the Nasa lander to detect "Marsquakes", which should reveal the internal structure of the Red Planet. Over the course of the coming months, Prof Pike will be updating us on InSight's progress. This was surely the best way to see our mission leave Earth, standing in a field in California with 1,500 people from the InSight mission team. We should be able to get a direct view of the launch pad eight miles away. At 4 o’clock in the morning after the final go/no-go checkout was announced over the big screens, the final countdown began. The act I had been desperate to see for the last decade was about to start. But an uninvited, ...