NASA is about to launch a new solar-powered lander to Mars — here's what the InSight will do on the red planet

The NASA inspection kit is named InSight, and it's a 794-pound Martian lander. InSight (which stands for is set to blast off for Mars from California's at around 4 a.m. PT on May 5, 2018.

Scientists at NASA say the lander will give the red planet a 4.5-billion-year-overdue "checkup." InSight has three main objectives on Mars: taking the planet's temperature, measuring its size, and monitoring for "marsquakes."

Take a look at what the roughly $828 million mission will do:

It will take about six months for the InSight lander to travel the roughly 301 million miles from southern California to Martian soil.

It will all weigh about 730,000 pounds when the launch fully fueled and ready for blastoff.

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If everything goes according to plan, InSight will land on Mars on November 26, 2018.

The last minutes of its journey traveling down into the Martian atmosphere will be the trickiest, as the lander slows down from around 12,500 miles per hour to 5 miles per hour in just seven minutes.

InSight will use a parachute and fire off thrusters to help itself slow down as it approaches the red planet. The legs of the machine are also shock absorbers.

Once InSight has touched down firmly on the Martian ground, it'll get to work examining the rocky surface of Mars. InSight scientists hope the lander will help them gain a better understanding of how all rocky planets, including Earth, formed.

The lander won't move around on Mars like a rover. Instead, it's more like an unmanned research station.

According to NASA, InSight "

After the roughly 20-foot-long lander touches down, it will soon start drilling its heat probe into the Martian soil. That will take about two months.

NASA calls the device "

InSight's probe, which is roughly one and a half stories tall, will check the temperature below the surface of Mars.

InSight will also be on the lookout for marsquakes.

NASA tried studying marsquakes once before with the Viking landers in the late 1970s. But their shake-measuring instruments sat on top of the landers, and often swayed in the wind.

"I joke that we didn't do seismology on Mars, we did it three feet above Mars," said.

The lander uses this roughly 7-foot-long robotic arm to move put the marsquake detector (seismometer) and its heat probe on the ground.

But there's a third important instrument included on InSight. A pair of antennas and a radio transmitter will record how much the planet shakes and wobbles as it orbits.

That will help scientists learn more about Mars' iron-rich core — they hope to find out how big the core is and whether it's a liquid or solid.

NASA went on a similar mission to examine Mars about 10 years ago. The Phoenix mission landed on the planet in 2008.

It lasted for only five months before it ran out of sunlight.

Phoenix wasn't designed to withstand the dark and frigid Martian winter, when temperatures can dip hundreds of degrees below zero (Fahrenheit). But InSight is ready for the cold.

InSight will spend more than one Mars year completing its investigation. That's equivalent to two Earth years, minus a couple days.

On Mars, days are measured as Sols. InSight will stay for 708 of those Mars days, but in Earth terms it'll be there for 728 days.

NASA is about to launch a new solar-powered lander to Mars — here's what the InSight will do on the red planet

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