When it comes to Mars, we’ve all gotten spoiled. Back in 1976, it was huge news when Viking 1 and 2 became the first spacecraft to land on the Red Planet. But these days just getting stationary metal on Mars isn’t so exciting, not when we’ve got an SUV-sized rover like Curiosity driving across the Martian plains and craters. A spacecraft that lands and then just sits there is something of a cosmic meh.

At 7:05 AM ET on May 5, however, that may change as NASA launches the Mars InSight lander, a sit-there ship that will explore a part of the planet no other spacecraft has studied in detail: its interior. The innards of Mars could teach us not only about the origin and development of the planet itself, but of other rocky worlds in our solar system, as well the count…