“Its energy is running out.” “NASA” ends the “Insight” mission on Mars
The US Aeronautics and Space Administration “NASA” announced that the “Insight” vehicle, which has been on the surface of Mars since 2018, will run out of energy and stop working within between four to eight weeks, while scientists talked about the details that it monitored in its four-year mission.
In a news briefing, Bruce Banerdt, a planetary physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the principal investigator for the InSight mission, said that dust is accumulating on the solar panels that bring power to the spacecraft, and that the situation is exacerbated by a dust storm, which depletes its batteries.
Vehicle power is running out
The InSight mission, which helped reveal the internal structure and seismic activity of Mars, was scheduled to last two years but has been extended to four.
Banerdt explained that when the power runs out, NASA will lose contact with the vehicle.
Insight Achievements
He added, “Insight has been a success beyond my expectations. We determined the crustal thickness, the size and density of the inner core, and the details of the outer surface structure. For the first time, we have a comprehensive, detailed map of the deep interior of a planet other than Earth and the Moon.”
Insight also revealed that Mars is seismically active, with 1,318 tremors detected. Two papers published in the journal Science detail meteor strikes on Mars discovered by Insight in September and December last year. The seismic waves generated by the strikes revealed new details about the structure of the Martian crust, the outer layer of the planet.
Of particular interest was a space rock between five and 12 meters in diameter that crashed on December 24 in an area called Amazones Planitia, carving a crater 150 meters wide and 21 meters deep. Similar massive objects enter Earth's atmosphere about once a year but generally burn up in our planet's thick atmosphere.
The vehicle "Perseverance"
However, “Insight” is not the only “NASA” vehicle on the red planet. Rather, the “Perseverance” vehicle has been on the surface of Mars since February 2021, and its mission is to search for signs of life on the planet.
The huge vehicle landed in the Jezero crater, which scientists believe contained a lake 3.5 billion years ago, which is considered the most dangerous landing site ever because of its terrain.
“NASA” intends to continue operating “Perseverance” until January 2023, and it is continuously sending images and searching for samples to study them, in an attempt to discover traces of ancient microorganisms that Mars was likely teeming with three billion years ago.
And just two days after the spacecraft landed on Mars, “NASA” published the first audio clip from Mars that the spacecraft was able to capture. The clip was the sound of a slight wind.
The spacecraft also took many pictures of the Martian surface, revealing debris, which is a conical umbrella and cover that helped it land a year ago on Mars. It sent a video of the solar eclipse from the surface of Mars.
And last June, “Perseverance” spotted what appeared to be a piece of cloth sandwiched between two rocks on Mars.
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