InSight Atlas V Boattail Halves Arrival, Offload, Mate

At Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, technicians inspect the boattail adaptor interface that will connect the Centaur upper stage to the payload fairing for NASA's upcoming Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, or InSight, mission to land on Mars. InSight will liftoff atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket to send the spacecraft on the first mission to explore the Red Planet's deep interior. It will investigate processes that shaped the rocky planets of the inner solar system including Earth. Liftoff from Vandenberg is scheduled for May 5, 2018.