NASA blasts off Mars-bound spacecraft to study quakes

NASA on Saturday blasted off its latest Mars lander, InSight, designed to perch on the surface and listen for "Marsquakes" in advance of eventual human missions to explore the Red Planet. The spacecraft, launched atop an Atlas V rocket at 4:05am Pacific time (11:05 GMT) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, marks NASA's first interplanetary mission from the US west coast. The $993m project aims to expand human knowledge of interior conditions on Mars, inform efforts to send human explorers there, and reveal how rocky planets like the Earth formed billions of years ago. If all goes as planned, the lander should settle on the Red Planet on November 26. Its name, InSight, is short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport.