Mumbai: Even as Nasa’s $2.5 billion Curiosity mission is beginning its scientific activity on the surface of the Red Planet, the space agency on Monday announced another mission to Mars which has been designated as InSight. Slated for launch in 20I6, the primary role of the In-Sight mission would be to probe the deep interior of Mars and see why it evolved so differently from earth as one of the solar system’s rocky planets, according to a Nasa announcement. InSight will deploy instruments on the surface of Mars to study whether the core of Mars is solid or liquid and why the crust of Mars is not divided into tectonic plates that drift like those on earth. According to Nasa such a study will help scientists to develop a deeper understanding as to how terrestrial planets form and evolve. Nasa states that InSightwill be equipped with four instruments. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) will provide what is known as an on board geodetic instrument which will determine the planet’s rotation axix and a robotic arm and two cameras used to deploy and monitor instruments on the surface of Mars. The French space agency, Centre National d’ Etudes Spatiales will lead an international consortium which will build an instrument to measure seismic waves travelling through the planet’s interior. The German Aerospace Centre will contribute a sub surface heat probe to measure the flow of heat from the interior.. With a price tag of $425 million, the InSight mission will build on spacecraft technology used in Nasa’s Phoenix lander mission.