NASA’s Mars rover InSight took photos of itself and sent them back to Earth in April this year. Red dust is accumulated on all solar panels. Courtesy of NASA
NASA’s unmanned probe Insight, which has been active on Mars, such as detecting 1,300 Martian earthquakes, has retired after four years.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) announced on the 21st (local time) that InSight was ending its exploration mission to Mars, saying the last signal was lost on December 15th. JPL said, “The solar arrays mounted on the InSight appear to have been shut down due to dust buildup.”
InSight was launched in May 2018 to unlock the secrets of the birth of Mars and the evolution process of the solar system. . It was originally designed for a two-year mission, but ran through two mission extensions.
“I’ve seen InSight launch and land on Mars,” said Thomas Zuberchen, NASA deputy science director.
InSight has observed more than 1,319 earthquakes on Mars in the past four years, including a magnitude 5 earthquake detected in May. In particular, following the analysis of earthquake data sent by Insight, it was revealed that a meteorite struck Mars in December last year, causing a magnitude 4 earthquake and a 150-meter crater.
Earthquakes are important information about the characteristics of the mantle and core of Mars and its crust. Raphael Garcia, a professor at the University of Toulouse in France, who published Insight’s analysis of four seismic waves generated by meteorite impacts on Mars in September this year, said: “Meteorite impacts are l ‘solar system clock. there is,” he said.
However, not all missions were successful with Insight. InSight tried to explore underground by digging up to 5m into the soil of Mars, but no matter how hard the drill worked, the hole in the ground didn’t work, so it dug only 30cm. The cause of the subsidence is not known in detail, but it is assumed that the ground was soft, such as sand or mud.
Meanwhile, it’s the second time NASA’s Mars rover has ended its mission due to dust. The Mars rover Opportunity, which landed on Mars in 2004, hibernated in a dust storm in May 2018 and ended its mission.
