1. gregladen
  2. It will be called InSight

It will be called InSight

By gregladen on March 4, 2012.

That is the new name of the proposed NASA mission to mars to Explore the Interior using Seismic Investigations.

"We chose the name InSight because we would literally peer into the interior of Mars to map out its structure," said JPL's Bruce Banerdt, the principal investigator. "With our geophysical instruments we will be able to see right through to the center of Mars, and will be able to map out how deeply the crust extends as well as the size of the core."

InSight is one of three missions vying to be selected for flight in the Discovery Program, a series of NASA missions to understand the solar system by exploring planets, moons, and small bodies such as comets and asteroids. All three mission teams are required to submit concept study reports to NASA on March 19.

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They chose the name but then clumped together a cumbersome acronym in order to spell it out? :

InSight stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport

Hmm ... Is that really necessary? A bit of imagination and invocation of other things could suggest better alternatives name~wise. Barsoom? Wells? Malancandra? Mars Eagle? Lowell?

I'm also curious as to what the rival missions its up against are - can't seem to find anything on them via the link.

Very early days for InSight, hope it goes ahead and works out.