Due to declining power, the mission will suspend scientific operations until the end of the summer, said Katya Zamora Garcia, deputy project manager at InSight at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, during a news conference Tuesday.
InSight’s solar panels are increasingly covered in red Martian dust, despite the creative efforts of the Earth mission team. This accumulation will only get worse when Mars enters winter, when more dust rises in the atmosphere.
These floating particles reduce the sunlight needed to charge the solar panels that power InSight, which is currently working on an extended mission that was expected to last until December. The mission achieved its main goals after the first two years on Mars.
The lander entered safe mode on May 7, when its energy levels dropped, causing it to stop everything but basic functions. The team predicts that this may happen more often in the future as dust levels increase.
The stationary lander is able to collect only about a tenth of the available power that was available after landing on Mars in November 2018. When InSight first landed, it could produce about 5,000 watts per day on Mars, the equivalent of that. which takes power to an electric oven for an hour and 40 minutes.
The lander now produces 500 watts per day, enough to power an electric oven in just 10 minutes. If 25% of the solar panels were cleaned, InSight would get enough power boost to keep it running. The spacecraft witnessed many dusty devils or whirlwinds, but no one was close enough to clear the solar panels.
“We hope to clean up the dust, as we’ve seen happen several times on Spirit and Opportunity rovers,” said Bruce Bannerd, InSight’s chief researcher at JPL. “It’s still possible, but the energy is low enough that our focus is making the most of the science we can still gather.”
The robotic arm of the lander will soon be placed in a “retirement position”.
By the end of the summer, the team will turn off the seismometer, suspend scientific operations and monitor what power levels remain on the lander. At the end of the year, the InSight mission will end.
However, the InSight team will still listen to every possible communication from the spacecraft and determine if it will ever be able to work again.
“The InSight mission was truly an amazing mission for us,” said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, during a news conference. “And that gave us a view of Mars that we couldn’t get from any other spacecraft in our NASA Martian fleet. Interpretation of InSight data has really improved our understanding of how rocky planets form in the universe.”
The device’s highly sensitive seismometer, called the Seismic Experiment for Internal Structure, has detected more than 1,300 earthquakes hundreds and thousands of miles away. The data collected by InSight so far has revealed new details about the little-known core and mantle of Mars. He also recorded meteorological data and analyzed the remnants of the magnetic field that once existed on Mars. InSight unveiled the largest ever, with a magnitude of 5, on May 4.
“Even as we begin to approach the end of our mission, Mars still gives us some really amazing things to see,” Banner said.
Earthquakes are like the earthquakes we experience on Earth, only slightly different when it comes to why they happen on every planet. On Earth, this recent event would be a medium-sized earthquake – but it reaches a new record for seismic activity, discovered by scientists studying Mars.
When we experience earthquakes, it is because the tectonic plates of the Earth shift, move and grind against each other. So far, Earth is the only known planet to have these plates.
So how do earthquakes on Mars happen? Think of the Martian crust as a giant plate. This crust has defects and cracks in it because the planet continues to shrink as it cools. This contraction loads the Martian crust, stretching and cracking it.
When the seismic waves of Martian earthquakes pass through various materials inside Mars, this allows scientists to study the structure of the planet. The analysis of their activities helps them understand the mysterious Martian interior and apply this research to learn how other rocky planets, including ours, are formed.
With InSight, scientists were able to map the interior of Mars for the first time in history, Banner said.
InSight’s research team continues to analyze the earthquake to better understand its origins, source and what it could reveal about the red planet.
The constant flow of InSight data to Earth scientists will stop when solar cells can no longer generate enough energy. But researchers will study the discoveries made by InSight for decades to come to learn as much as possible about our mysterious planetary neighbor.
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