The famous Red Planet never goes off radar, as NASA announces that its next mission to Mars is in a pre-flight testing phase as the agency prepares to launch its stationary Lander in March next year.

NASA’s next Mars Lander, named ‘The Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport’ (InSight) is being tested to ensure if it can survive deep space travel and the harsh conditions on the Martian surface.

During the environmental testing phase, the Lander will be exposed to conditions that simulate interplanetary space like extreme temperatures, vacuum conditions of nearly zero air pressure, vibration like the ones experienced during launch and several such tests for the next seven months.

Stu Spath, InSight Program Manager at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, Colo, informed, “The assembly of InSight went very well and now it’s time to see how it performs. The environmental testing regimen takes nearly as long as assembly, but we want to make sure we deliver a vehicle to NASA that will perform as expected in extreme environments”.

InSight is the first mission that is devoted to understand the interior structure of the Red Planet. To examine the planet’s deep interior, InSight will deploy an instrument called HP3 that will hammer five meters into the Martian subsurface and would calculate the amount of heat that is coming from Mars interior. It will also deploy a seismometer, and a doppler shift detector called RISE to measure the planet's wobble.

This will not only reveal the planet’s thermal history but it would also offer clues about evolution and formation of all rocky planets including Earth.

The spacecraft will lift off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in March 2016 and will land on Mars about six months later.

Tom Hoffman, InSight Project Manager, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. stated that many teams from across the globe have worked long hours to get their elements of the system delivered for these tests and it is fantastic to get to this critical milestone.