AskScience AMA Series: We're scientists and engineers on the InSight lander team who studied the deep interior of Mars. Ask us anything!

NASA's InSight lander sent its last transmission on Dec. 15, 2022, after more than four years of unique science work. The spacecraft - which landed on Mars in 2018 - detected 1,319 marsquakes, gathered data on the Red Planet's crust, mantle, and core, and even captured the sounds of meteoroid impacts miles away on the Martian surface.

So, have you ever wanted to know how operating a lander on Mars is different from a rover? Or how engineers practice mission operations in an indoor Mars lab here on Earth? How about what we might still learn from InSight's data in the months and years to come?

Meet six team experts from NASA and other mission partners who've seen it all with this mission, from efforts to get InSight's heat probe (or "mole") into the Martian surface to the marsquakes deep within the planet.

We are:

Phil Bailey (PB) - Operations lead for the robotic arm and cameras. Also worked with InSight's Earthly twin, ForeSight, at NASA JPL's In-Situ Instrument Laboratory.
Kathya Zamora Garcia (KG) - Mission manager for InSight, also helped clean InSight's solar arrays with Martian dirt.
Troy Hudson (TH) - A former instrument systems engineer and anomaly response team lead for the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Probe, known as "the mole."
Mark Panning (MP) - Project scientist for InSight, specializing in planetary seismology.
Emily Stough (ES) - Led surface operations for InSight.
Brett White (BW) - Power subsystem and energy management lead with Lockheed Martin, which helped build the lander.

Ask us anything about:

How InSight worked
Marsquakes
How the interiors of Mars, Earth and the Moon compare and differ
Meteoroid impacts
Martian weather
InSight's legacy

We'll be online from 12-1:30 p.m. PT (3-4:30 p.m. ET, 20-21:30 UT) to answer your questions!

Usernames: /u/nasa

UPDATE 1:30 p.m. PT: That’s all the time we have for today - thank you all for your amazing questions! If you’d like to learn more about InSight, you can visit mars.nasa.gov/insight.

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