This Week at NASA: Mars InSight, Vice President Mike Pence, the Pope and More

On Oct. 26, Vice President Mike Pence joined our Associate Administrator for Science, Thomas Zurbuchen for a close-up view of the agency’s Mars InSight spacecraft, during a visit to the Littleton, Colorado facilities of Lockheed Martin.
InSight is being prepped for a May 2018 launch to the Red Planet, with landing targeted for next November. The mission will study the deep interior of Mars, with a primary goal of helping scientists understand how rocky planets – including Earth – formed and evolved. The vice president also visited a Virtual Reality lab that featured demos of the company’s human exploration efforts, including our Orion spacecraft. Orion will launch on the agency’s Space Launch System rocket, and take humans farther into the solar system than ever before. Also, Interstellar Visitor from Beyond the Solar System, Space Station Crew Talks with Pope Francis, Dawn Finds Possible Ancient Ocean Remnants at Ceres, and Take a Walk on Mars.