NASA plans to launch a relatively modest Mars lander in 2016 that will make a rocket-powered descent to the surface to study whether the red planet’s core is solid or liquid and whether the planet has tectonic plates that slowly move like continents on Earth, agency managers said Monday. The primary goals of the cost-capped Discovery-class mission are to learn more about what shaped Mars’ evolution and why the planet turned out so similar, and yet so different, than Earth. “This has been something that has interested the scientific community for many years,” said NASA science chief John Grunsfeld. Read the full story at CNET.