NASA Mars InSight Lander sends last image before signing off
NASA's InSight Lander has sent a message, which could be its last as the spacecraft's power continues to dwindle. In November, the space agency announced that the Lander has been accumulating dust on its solar panels and its power generation capacity was declining. It has prevailed longer than its primary mission lifetime of two Earth years since it reached the planet on November 2018.
Why does this story matter?
InSight, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport, is the first outer space robotic explorer to probe the "inner space" of Mars: crust, mantle, and core. It was also the first to detect quakes on the red planet. It has measured over 1,300 seismic events, out of which over 50 have been clear enough that their location could be traced.
This could be the last message from InSight Lander
When will the mission be officially terminated?
An official end would be put to the InSight mission when it misses two consecutive communication sessions with the spacecraft orbiting Mars, which relays information back to Earth. NASA's Deep Space Network will also be closely monitoring if the Lander sends out any signals.
The Lander recently detected Mars' largest quake
InSight recently detected the largest marsquake in May 2022 with a magnitude of 5. It was five times more powerful than the previous marsquake recorded in August 2021, which had a magnitude of around 4.2. While most of the previous marsquakes have not exceeded an hour, the 5-magnitude marsquake lasted a whopping 10 hours. Marsquake magnitudes can be compared to those of earthquakes.
The marsquake occurred 2,000km away from the Lander
"The energy released by this single marsquake is equivalent to the cumulative energy from all other Marsquakes we've seen so far," said John Clinton, a seismologist from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. "Although the event was over 2,000km distant, the waves recorded at InSight were so large they almost saturated our seismometer." Such seismic events provide information underlying surface elements on Mars, including water.
The meteorite impact churned up buried ice on Mars
InSight detected a 4-magnitude marsquake in 2021, which was later found to be due to a meteorite impact, one of the largest on Mars. The impact uncovered ice beneath Mars' surface and this was captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Ice deposits in such warmer equatorial areas might serve as future landing sites for astronauts to use for consumption, or as rocket propellant.
