{"id":11120,"date":"2022-12-22T01:54:36","date_gmt":"2022-12-21T17:54:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/nasas-insight-lander-bows-out-after-ground-shaking-mars-mission\/"},"modified":"2022-12-22T01:54:36","modified_gmt":"2022-12-21T17:54:36","slug":"nasas-insight-lander-bows-out-after-ground-shaking-mars-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/nasas-insight-lander-bows-out-after-ground-shaking-mars-mission\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s InSight lander bows out after ground-shaking Mars mission"},"content":{"rendered":"
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NASA\u2019s InSight lander used its robotic arm to capture this final \u201cselfie\u201d of the mission in April 2022. Dust is visible on the lander\u2019s two solar panels. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dust-laden solar panels and darker Martian skies have finally sealed the fate of NASA\u2019s InSight mission, the agency announced Wednesday, after the intrepid lander delivered its final message from Mars at the end of its history-making mission to reveal the secrets of the Red Planet\u2019s interior.<\/p>\n

Shared on the NASA InSight Twitter account on Monday, the message, read: \u201cMy power\u2019s really low, so this may be the last image I can send. Don\u2019t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will \u2013 but I\u2019ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The transmission from the planet\u2019s surface was accompanied by what was one of the final wide-angle photos taken by InSight, showing scientific instruments resting on the surface of Mars.<\/p>\n

NASA reported Sunday that InSight had not responded to communications from Earth and its last contact with the lander had been three days earlier. NASA formally declared the InSight mission over Wednesday, after InSight missed another communications opportunity with Earth.<\/p>\n

The robotic geologist, armed with a mechanical hammer and seismic quake monitor, first touched down on the barren expanse of Elysium Planitia in November 2018. Its landing site, on a volcanic plain near the equator, was chosen for its flat, featureless landscape, allowing for more accurate seismic measurements to be taken directly from the surface.<\/p>\n

InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy & Heat Transport) launched on May 5, 2018, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and, after a six-month cruise, landed on Mars on November 26 where it immediately began surface operations with science data collection starting 10 weeks later.<\/p>\n

Over almost four years, InSight has yielded data about Mars\u2019 interior layers, its liquid core, the surprisingly variable remnants beneath the surface of its mostly extinct magnetic field, weather in the vicinity of its location on Mars, and lots of quake activity.<\/p>\n

InSight\u2019s seismometer, provided by France\u2019s Centre National d\u2019\u00c9tudes Spatiales (CNES), has detected more than 1,300 marsquakes, the largest measuring a magnitude 5. It has also recorded quakes from multiple meteoroid impacts and more than 10,000 dust devils.<\/p>\n

Observing how the seismic waves from those quakes change as they travel through the planet offers an invaluable glimpse into Mars\u2019 interior but also provides a better understanding of how all rocky worlds, including Earth and its Moon, may form.<\/p>\n

Seismic data analysed to date has revealed the Martian crust is drier and more broken up from asteroid impacts than scientists originally thought and has at least two sublayers, wrapped around a large liquid core.<\/p>\n

Since a planet\u2019s full history is encoded in its interior layers, InSight\u2019s findings will help researchers revisit scientific models of how rocky planets form and, ultimately, inform the study of worlds beyond our solar system that could host life.<\/p>\n

\u201cFinally, we can see Mars as a planet with layers, with different thicknesses, compositions,\u201d said mission principal investigator Bruce Banerdt, based at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. \u201cWe\u2019re starting to really tease out the details. Now it\u2019s not just this enigma; it\u2019s actually a living, breathing planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

James Green, NASA senior advisor, told Spaceflight Now: \u201cThe InSight mission answered many important questions that we just needed to know about as scientists but also in support of future human exploration.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is the size of the crust, mantle, and core of Mars? Is Mars a dead world or still an active, living planet? How intense are Mars quakes and will they pose a hazard to human exploration?<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me one of the biggest surprises was finding out that Mars still have a liquid outer core. Now us scientists have to figure out why?\u201d<\/p>\n

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This is one of the last images ever taken by NASA\u2019s InSight Mars lander. Captured on Dec. 11, 2022, the 1,436th Martian day, or sol, of the mission, it shows InSight\u2019s seismometer on the Red Planet\u2019s surface. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Indications that InSight\u2019s mission was finally drawing to a close came when the solar powered lander issued an update in November, reminiscing on its time in space. \u201cI\u2019ve been lucky enough to live on two planets. Four years ago, I arrived safely at the second one, to the delight of my family back on the first. Thanks to my team for sending me on this journey of discovery. Hope I\u2019ve done you proud,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

NASA declared the mission over Wednesday when InSight has missed two consecutive communication sessions with the spacecraft orbiting Mars \u2013 part of the Mars Relay Network \u2013 but only if the cause of the missed communication is the lander itself. NASA\u2019s Deep Space Network is expected to listen for a while longer, just in case.<\/p>\n

Managers at JPL have said there will be no heroic measures to re-establish contact with InSight, but haven\u2019t completely ruled out a mission-saving event such as a strong gust of wind that blows dust off the solar panels, though that is considered unlikely.<\/p>\n

A vital final step for the InSight mission is storing its trove of data and making it accessible to researchers around the world. Seismometer readings will join the only other sets of extraterrestrial seismic data, from the Apollo lunar missions and the Viking Mars missions, in NASA\u2019s Planetary Data System.<\/p>\n

InSight was manufactured by Lockheed Martin Space Systems with most of its scientific instruments supplied by European agencies. The spacecraft was originally planned for launch in March 2016 but a last minute repair to an instrument problem pushed it beyond the launch window for that year to the next opportunity in 2018 and increased the mission cost from US$675 million to US$830 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NASA\u2019s InSight lander used its robotic arm to capture this final \u201cselfie\u201d of the mission in April 2022. Dust is visible on the lander\u2019s two solar panels. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech Dust-laden solar panels and darker Martian skies have finally sealed the fate of NASA\u2019s InSight mission, the agency announced Wednesday, after the intrepid lander delivered its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11120"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}