The stationary spacecraft captured images on April 24 with its robotic arm, which will soon be placed in its final resting position in what it calls “retirement mode” this month. To take a selfie, the arm has to move several times, and that’s no longer possible.
Due to dwindling energy supplies, the mission will cease scientific work at the end of the summer. He has been uncovering the mysterious interior of Mars since its landing in November 2018.
InSight’s solar panels are getting covered in red Martian dust, despite creative efforts By the mission team in the field. This accumulation This will only get worse as Mars is now into winter, when more dust will be rising into the atmosphere.
These floating particles reduce the sunlight needed to charge the solar panels that power InSight, which is currently on an extended mission that is expected to last through December. The mission achieved its ultimate goal after its first two years on the surface of Mars.
The last selfie showed the lander covered in more dust than previous selfies in December 2018 and April 2019.
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The lander entered safe mode on May 7, when its energy level dropped, causing it to stop all but essential functions. The team anticipates that this could happen more often In the future with increased dust levels.
The stationary lander was only able to collect about a tenth of its available power supply after landing on Mars in November 2018. When it first landed, the InSight could generate about 5,000 watt-hours per day on Mars, roughly how long it would take to run. Electric oven for 1 hour 40 minutes.
Now, the probe produces 500 watts per day, which is enough to power an electric furnace for only 10 minutes. If 25% of the solar panels are cleaned, InSight will see a considerable energy boost for the continuation. The spaceship has seen a lot of dust demons, or whirlwinds, but Neither of them are close enough to remove the solar panels.
“We hope to clean up the dust as we’ve seen it happen several times for the Spirit and Opportunity spacecraft,” Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement. “It’s still possible, but the energy is low enough that our focus is on maximizing the knowledge we can still gather.”
In late summer, the team will turn off the seismometers, stop scientific operations, and monitor the remaining energy levels on the probes. At the end of the year, the InSight mission will end.
However, the InSight team will continue to listen for any potential communications from the spacecraft and determine if it can be revived.
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“Even as we near the end of our mission, Mars still gives us some pretty amazing things to see,” Banerdt said.
The constant stream of data to scientists on Earth from InSight will stop when the solar cells can’t generate enough power. But researchers will study the discoveries InSight has made over the coming decades to learn as much as they can about our mysterious planetary neighbour.
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