Dust, rocks and a hazy horizon. This is the image of NASA’s InSight lander as it enters its final days on Mars. During its mission, the solar-powered lander probed the interior of the planet, measuring and analyzing its earthquakes, sending data back to Earth. Now, InSight is nearing the end of its mandate, as its solar panels have lost their efficiency due to Mars’s perpetually dusty atmosphere.NASA InSight is retiring
NASA’s InSight vehicle (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) is a spacecraft designed to probe the depths of Mars. The vehicle, which landed in the Elysium Planitia region of Mars in 2018, placed a seismograph and a heat probe in the region where it landed. In addition, information was collected with various photographs with the camera included.NASA’s InSight rover has spent more than 1,300 Martian days on the Martian surface and has detected more than 1,300 earthquakes during that time. The vehicle, which also collected information about the weather conditions and surface of the planet, also investigated the liquid core of Mars. In addition, he sent data important for mapping the inner geology of the planet to Earth. InSight’s Twitter account, which is now running out of power, posted the following: “I’m really low on power, so this may be the last photo I can post. Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and calm. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I’ll talk – but I’ll be leaving soon. Thanks for staying with me.”
InSight’s impending demise is actually not surprising. Because scientists warned us that this was coming in May of this year. At that time, InSight’s solar panels were starting to become covered in the red dust of Mars, and functionality was greatly reduced. In fact, InSight’s power level was only 10 percent of normal in that experiment. As a result of the intervening months, this power level has probably dropped even more. Now only a quiet ending awaits him.
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