The InSight lander on Mars is dead. NASA’s spacecraft has been conducting earthquake research on the red planet for the past four years. Of these, more than thirteen hundred have been identified.
NASA announced in May that the Mars lander was on its last legs. InSight has lost too much power to continue its work. Presumably, the spacecraft would not arrive at the end of the year.
NASA’s prediction came true: InSight sent the last Earth photo on December 11th. The space agency assumes the lander has finally failed after about four years. InSight was launched in May 2018. In November of the same year, the spacecraft landed on Mars.
In recent years, the spacecraft has mainly conducted research on seismological activity on Mars. This could give scientists a better idea of what lies beneath the planet’s surface. For example, the researchers hoped to find water, although the spacecraft never determined it.
More than thirteen hundred recorded Martian earthquakes
The Mars lander recorded a total of more than 1,300 aftershocks on the red planet. So was an extremely strong earthquake on May 4, which hit the planet for ten hours vibrate. According to the researchers, this earthquake released as much energy as all other recorded Martian earthquakes combined. Also, no other recorded tremors lasted more than an hour.
The Mars lander also studied the planet’s atmosphere and magnetic fields. In September, InSight recorded the sound of a meteorite impact. NASA released the audio recording, which totals eleven seconds, at SoundCloud. In the clip, you can hear the meteorite enter the Martian atmosphere, break apart, and then impact.
Dust on solar panels kills Marslander
The fact that the Mars lander has been losing more and more energy has to do with the amount of dust that has accumulated on the spacecraft’s solar panels. The lander is equipped with two solar arrays, each about 2.2 meters wide.
The dust limited the amount of energy the craft could draw from. NASA had hoped that a powerful vortex could provide a solution by blowing 25 percent of the dust off the solar panels, but that didn’t happen in time. It is not yet known whether InSight will have a successor.
