This was announced by the American space agency, NASA declarationon the loss of contact with its “Insight” probe located on the surface of Mars, after four years spent exploring the red planet.
And the day before yesterday, Tuesday, the official page of the probe on Twitter published the latest image sent by “Insight”.
My power is very low so this may be the last picture I can send. Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene. If I can continue to talk to my team about the mission, I will, but I will be stepping down soon. Thanks for staying with me. pic.twitter.com/wkYKww15kQ
— NASA InSight (@NASAInSight) December 19, 2022
“Farewell to a spaceship is always sad, but Insight’s extraordinary scientific achievements are a cause for joy,” NASA Associate Administrator Thomas Zurbuken said in a statement.
Equipped with an ultrasensitive French-made seismometer, InSight recorded more than 1,300 “mars tremors,” some of them caused by meteorites.
A year ago, a meteorite so powerful that it scattered blocks of ice on the surface of Mars.
The end of this mission was foreseen, as the spacecraft’s residual energy was reduced due to the Martian dust accumulated on its solar panels, which was what NASA had expected from the beginning.
NASA received the last notification from “Insight” on December 15, and until the 18th of the same month, the US agency tried to contact it twice, but without success, prompting the teams to conclude that the probe’s batteries were dead .
NASA said in its statement that it is continuing to try to capture any notifications, but that this possibility is “unlikely.”
The mission provided additional information about Mars’ inner layers and its liquid core, as well as the weather in parts of this planet, as well as seismic activity.
Scientists were able, for example, to confirm that the Martian core is liquid and to determine the thickness of the Martian crust, which turned out to be less dense than previously thought.
The ‘Insight’ probe landed on the surface of Mars in November 2018 and was working in collaboration with the National Center for Space Studies in France.
However, the mission failed to achieve one of its objectives, which was to plant an instrument a few meters below the surface of Mars to measure the temperature of this planet, but the composition of the soil at the landing site prevented the instrument from to be planted as intended.
And after being installed at a depth of about 40 centimeters, the instrument was able to provide “valuable data on the physical and thermal properties of the Martian soil,” according to NASA.
