All being well, November 26th will see the touchdown of the latest mission to Mars. InSight, an American craft, is intended to examine the planet’s interior. Once it has landed it will use a robotic arm to deploy a seismometer and a probe designed to measure the heat beneath Mars’s surface.

The seismometer will record any Marsquakes that happen during the Martian year (two terrestrial years) that the mission is planned to operate for. It will also record meteorite impacts. The number of Marsquakes will indicate how geologically active the planet is. Analysing the vibrations those quakes and meteorites generate will give clues about the composition of the Martian interior...