A sonda InSight Mars Lander, em Marte since 2018, it is at the end of its life: in a few months, it must turn off, due to lack of energy. But even in its dying breaths, it continues to provide valuable insights into geological and seismic processes on the red planet. THE Nasa spoke more about the discoveries and the future of the mission, in a live on Tuesday afternoon (17).
The team estimates that the probe, now covered in orange Martian dust, should continue conducting scientific operations until mid-July, and gradually shutting down all activities by the end of this year. Even his robotic arm will be placed in “retirement position”.
As my power levels diminish due to dust on my solar panels, my team has set my retirement plans in motion. Plans call for a gradual shutdown of instruments, including resting my arm in a “retirement pose.”
Read more: https://t.co/eATDXbOlx2 pic.twitter.com/OsbsufAvmi
— NASA InSight (@NASAInSight) May 17, 2022
–
“One of InSight’s legacies is that it really proves the use of seismology technique for planetary science,” said Bruce Banerdt, principal investigator on the project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “We were able to map the interior of Mars for the first time in history.”
Martemotos
On May 4, InSight detected a magnitude 5 “marsquake” — equivalent to an average earthquake here on Earth, but the largest quake ever recorded on another planet. “We were waiting for the ‘big one,'” Banerdt said. “It will certainly provide a view of the planet like no other. Scientists will analyze this data to learn new things about Mars for years to come.”
The probe landed on Mars in November 2018, equipped with a supersensitive seismograph, to study the structure and activities emanating from the planet’s interior. It has since detected more than 1,300 tremors. The old record was for a magnitude 4.2 tremor — about ten times weaker — in August 2021.
But these discoveries come at a price: after three and a half years in such an arid and hostile place, there is a lot of dust accumulated in the photovoltaic solar panels, which generate energy for their operation. Unlike the Perseverance and Curiosity probes, which are rovers (robots with wheels that move across the surface), InSight is a (stationary) lander.
Without moving, and catching less and less sunlight, it is degrading. At first, InSight operated at about 5,000 watt hours per “sun” (a day on Mars). Today, this number has dropped to around 500 Wh. Project manager Kathya Zamora Garcia exemplified: it is a reduction equivalent to an electric oven connected to the earth going from 1h40 working to just 10 minutes.
The JPL team managed to improve the situation a little with a risky maneuver: picking up a handful of Martian soil, with his arm, and throwing it into the dust. This has been successfully done six times, according to Kathya Zamora Garcia, deputy project manager at InSight.
But it was possible to only marginally clean the panels — the shutdown is still irreversible, unless a miracle happens, like a very strong wind. Likewise, a dust storm can further anticipate the lander’s fatal fate.
Mars InSight Lander seismograph
Image: NASA/JPL
–
Legacy
Even with this outcome, which was already predicted, the mission is a success, exceeding NASA’s expectations and yielding several published studies.
Studies of this type are essential for understanding the structure and evolution of rocky planets such as Earth, Mars and Venus. Mars doesn’t have plate tectonics like Earth, so events take place in the mantle — the molten region beneath the crust. Seismographs can also record movements caused by impacts.
InSight has given us our best view of the red planet’s geologic and seismic systems: it revealed the thickness and composition of the crust, details of the mantle and core. And there is a huge volume of data for scientists to analyze, with Martian secrets, for many years after their “death”.
–
