The InSight lander stopped responding and has officially completed its mission, according to NASA

(NASA / https://go.nasa.gov/3FO5S9E)

The Martian InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) lander has finally died.

NASA made three attempts to contact the lander but they were unsuccessful, which means that the robot died due to a lack of electricity.

Thus, the scientific program of InSight, which lasted more than 4 years, is finally completed.

InSight landed on Mars in November 2018 and became the first geophysical extraterrestrial exploration mission.

The device is equipped with cameras, weather sensors, a seismograph named SEIS and an HP3 impact probe.

Initially, it was expected that the vortices that arise in the Martian atmosphere would be able to periodically clean the station's solar panels from dust and sand deposited on them.

However, scientists' predictions did not come true, as did attempts to artificially clean the batteries.

As a result, the available electrical power was reduced in a few years from 5,000 to 285 watt-hours.

The research team even had to turn off scientific instruments and a failure protection system in an attempt to extend the operation of the station, in particular the SEIS seismograph.

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MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
It was expected that InSight would be able to work until the end of January 2023.

However, on December 15, 2022, the station did not reach the planned communication session with the Earth.

NASA then tried to contact the device twice, but the attempts were unsuccessful.

Finally, on December 21, the agency announced the end of InSight the scientific program, which most likely died due to a lack of electricity.

Just in case, the NASA Deep Space Communications System will try to hear signals from the station, but the likelihood of this is small.

For 4 years of work on Mars, InSight recorded 1319 quakes, the most powerful of which had a magnitude of 4.7.

The probe made many scientific discoveries

• it determined the main boundaries between the layers of Mars
• made a detailed diagram of the subsurface layers
• estimated the size of the core of the Red Planet
• revealed the seasonality of marsquakes and associated some of them with the impacts of large meteorites

And now, its watch has ended.

Sources:

• NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-retires-insight-mars-lander-mission-after-years-of-science
• CNN: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/21/world/nasa-insight-mars-mission-end-scn/index.html
• NPR: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/20/1144402999/nasa-insight-mars-lander

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#science #space #insight #nasa #mars #news #nftmc