FOR centuries humanity has pondered what might lie beneath the dusty red surface of Mars - now it looks like we are set to find out after NASA yesterday launched a spacecraft on a 300-million-mile trip to the planet.

The mission will study for the first time what lies deep beneath the surface of the mysterious Red Planet.

Nasa launched the Mars InSight lander from California rather than Florida's Cape Canaveral. The first interplanetary mission ever to depart from the US West Coast, drew pre-dawn crowds to Vandenberg Air Force Base.

The spacecraft will take more than six months to get to Mars and start its unprecedented geological excavations.

First reports indicate the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket that carried InSight into space was seen as far as Arizona.

A video recording was made of the launch from a private aircraft flying along the California coast.

The spacecraft reached orbit 13 minutes and 16 seconds after lift-off.

With its successful launch, NASA’s InSight team will now focus on the six-month voyage.

Tom Hoffman, InSight project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. “We’ve received positive indication the InSight spacecraft is in good health and we are all excited to be going to Mars once again to do groundbreaking science.”

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said: "As we continue to gain momentum in our work to send astronauts back to the Moon and on to Mars, missions like InSight are going to prove invaluable.”

InSight will dig deeper into Mars than ever before - nearly 16 feet - to take the planet's temperature.

It will also attempt to make the first measurements of 'Marsquakes', using a high-tech seismometer placed directly on the Martian surface.

Previous missions to Mars investigated the surface history of the Red Planet by examining features like canyons, volcanoes, rocks and soil.

However, no-one has attempted to investigate the planet's earliest evolution, which can only be found by looking far below the surface.

The one billion dollar mission involves scientists from the US, France, Germany and elsewhere in Europe.

Nasa has not put a spacecraft down on Mars since the Curiosity rover in 2012.

The US is the only country to successfully land and operate a spacecraft on Mars.

Only about 40 per cent of all missions to Mars from all countries - both orbiters and landers alike - have proven successful over the decades.

If all goes well, the three-legged InSight probe will descend by parachute and with engine firings onto a flat equatorial region of Mars - believed to be free of big, potentially dangerous rocks - on November 26.

Once down, it will stay put, using a mechanical arm to place the science instruments on the surface.

"This mission will probe the interior of another terrestrial planet, giving us an idea of the size of the core, the mantle, the crust and our ability then to compare that with the Earth," said Nasa's chief scientist, Jim Green.

"This is of fundamental importance to understand the origin of our solar system and how it became the way it is today."

InSight's chief scientist, Bruce Banerdt, said Mars is ideal for learning how the rocky planets of our solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago.

Unlike our active Earth, Mars has not been transformed by plate tectonics and other processes, he noted.

Over the course of two Earth years - or one Martian year - scientists expect InSight's three main experiments to provide a true 3-D image of Mars.

Nasa normally launches from Cape Canaveral, but decided to switch to California for InSight to take advantage of a shorter flight backlog.