1st LD: NASA sends off Mars lander

LOMPOC, the United States, May 5 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sent off InSight, its robotic lander, from the central coast of California at pre-dawn on Saturday to explore the deep interior of the red planet.

The lander blasted off at 4:05 a.m. local time (1105 GMT) atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force Base.

The InSight, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, will study how rocky planets and their moons were formed.

This is the first mission to another planet from the Vandenberg Air Force Base instead of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, from where most of NASA's space missions took off. Enditem