Q&A with Earl Maize, Cassini project manager (members only)

Bruce Banerdt leads the InSight science team, and is in charge of the lander heading for Mars to study the red planet’s interior structure, collecting data that should yield new information about the environment in the early solar system, when planets coalesced and formed 4.5 billion years ago.

After years of analyses and debate, NASA announced Monday that the agency’s next Mars rover will land on or near an ancient river delta where water once flowed into a 30-mile-wide, 1,600-foot-deep crater to search for signs of ancient microbial life and to continue ongoing studies of the red planet’s history and evolution.

The Vikram lander, part of India’s Chandrayaan 2 mission launched in July, will attempt to land near the lunar south pole Friday and deploy a rover to conduct the first on-the-ground scientific surveys away from the moon’s equatorial regions.