Saturday morning, NASA launched the Mars InSight lander from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on a first-ever mission to study the core of the Red Planet.
Why it matters: Per NASA, InSight "will peer deep beneath the Martian surface, studying the planet's interior by measuring its heat output and listening for marsquakes, which are seismic events similar to earthquakes on Earth." The launch was NASA's first planetary mission to take off from the West Coast. [Go deeper:Follow the spacecraft's journey on NASA TV.]
