This year is a Mars launch window, and NASA is taking full advantage of it with their Discovery-class InSight mission. This little lander will launch in May and land on Mars in November. Farah Alibay is a Payload Systems Engineer on this mission, and she joins Jake to talk about InSight’s objectives, integrating the instruments with the spacecraft, and the MarCO technology demonstrator.

We Discuss NASA InSight and MarCO

• NASA’s InSight Landing Page
• InSight’s Wikipedia
• InSight unfurls its solar panels ahead of launch

Past Coverage of InSight

• Episode 2: Every Twenty Six Months (February 2016)
• Episode 18: The State of Mars 2017 (January 2017)
• Episode 35: The State of Mars 2018 (January 2018)

Follow Farah and JPL

• NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Twitter and Instagram
• Farah’s Instagram

Follow Jake & WeMartians

• Website (www.wemartians.com)
• Patreon (www.patreon.com/wemartians)
• WeMartians Shop (shop.wemartians.com)
• Twitter (@we_martians)
• Facebook (@wemartians)
• Instagram (@wemartians)
• Jake’s Twitter (@JakeOnOrbit)

WeMartians music is “RetroFuture”, “Electrodoodle”, and “On My Way” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/