Why Is NASA's InSight Mars Mission Launching from California?

The month-long launch window for NASA's new Mars lander, InSight opens this weekend. InSight will be the first spacecraft to use a robotic arm to place its instruments on another planet's soil--effectively unraveling the innards of the Red Planet. It's also the first interplanetary mission to launch from the West Coast instead of Cape Canaveral, and it may not be the last. Its mission is to peer deep into Mars with two main instruments. One is a probe that'll hammer 16 feet deep to take the planet's temperature and determine how much heat it's losing.