NASA InSight launch: Incredible images show moment spacecraft blasts off on Mars mission

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Incredible images have emerged showing the moment a NASA spacecraft blasted off to Mars on a mission to explore the deep interior of the red planet.

The Mars InSight lander was fired into space on a powerful Atlas 5 rocket which launched on Saturday from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

It launched at about 4.05am Pacific time (12.05pm UK time) and is the first interplanetary mission to take off from the west coast of the US.

Photos shared by NASA show the rocket fire up its engines, smoke billowing from its base, before taking off on its mission.

The Insight lander will take more than six months to reach Mars and start its unprecedented geologic excavations.

It will land on a broad, smooth plain close to the planet's equator called the Elysium Planitia. That will put Insight roughly 373 miles from the 2012 landing site of the car-sized Mars rover Curiosity.

The rocket fires up its engines (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
(NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Once settled, the solar-powered InSight will spend two years – about one Martian year – plumbing the depths of the planet's interior for clues to how Mars took form with the hope of finding out more about the origins of the Earth and other rocky planets.

InSight's primary instrument is a French-built seismometer, designed to detect the slightest vibrations from "marsquakes" around the planet.

The NASA spacecraft takes off on its mission to Mars (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
(NASA/Bill Ingalls)

The device, to be placed on the surface by the lander's robot arm, is so sensitive it can measure a seismic wave just one-half the radius of a hydrogen atom.

Scientists expect to see a dozen to 100 marsquakes over the course of the mission, producing data to help them deduce the depth, density and composition of the planet's core, the rocky mantle surrounding it and the outermost layer, the crust.

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Instruments on the lander will dig deeper into Mars than ever before – nearly 16 feet – to take the planet's temperature.

Meanwhile, a special transmitter on the lander will send radio signals back to Earth, tracking Mars' subtle rotational wobble to reveal the size of the planet's core and possibly whether it remains molten.

The new 360kg Insight spacecraft marks the 21st US-launched Martian exploration.

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