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At the end of October, the Martian lander NASA InSight thanks to the publication of the study related to the impact of a meteorite on the surface of the Red Planet in December last year (and then taken from orbit thanks to MRO’s HiRISE camera). This is an important discovery as it allows us to understand how the surface of Mars he comes “modeled” from impacts as well as revealing some ice hidden under the dust.
Unfortunately the lander it is slowly coming to the end of its operational life. For several months, engineers have been monitoring the ability of solar panels to produce energy and the sandstorms of the winter period have not benefited the autonomy of InSight. This means that in the coming weeks the lander may no longer respond to contacts from Earth, decreeing the end of the mission. A mission that has nevertheless collected important data to study.
NASA InSight and the latest images from Mars
In May of this year, what will probably be the last one was taken “selfie” of the Martian lander showing its surface covered with dust. Over the months other images of part of the lander were captured to show scientists and engineers some details with the latest photographs taken on October 30 (during the 1395 sun).
The penultimate image of the Martian lander from October 10, 2022
As written in an article of the space agency “The day is approaching when NASA’s InSight Martian lander will go silent, ending its historic mission to reveal the secrets of the interior of the Red Planet”. The team, currently made up of 25-30 people, is preparing to close the work and then make the collected data available to all researchers worldwide. This means that even if the lander will stop working, there may be new discoveries “posthumous”.
The last image of the Martian lander from 10 October 2022 (source)
When it was summer on Earth, come on Mars the winter period began by reducing the energy available for NASA InSight (less than 20% of what was obtained at the beginning of the mission). This forced the engineers to turn off all unnecessary tools and leave only the seismometer. As with all other missions, on our planet there is a copy, called ForeSight, of the lander which was used by the engineers to find solutions to the problems that arose. This model will now be stored in storage as it is no longer useful (but will not be destroyed).
There mission from NASA InSight it will end when the agency has no response for two consecutive times from the lander through the Mars Relay Network (the lander does not communicate directly with the Earth but uses orbiters around the planet). Bruce Banerdt (of the JPL) stated “we are at the mercy of Mars. Time on Mars is not rain and snow; time on Mars is dust and wind”.
Cleaning the solar panels of NASA InSight
One of the most frequently asked questions is “why didn’t NASA have a system to clean the solar panels?”. The answer is obviously complex but it had already been given before. This is just a brief summary.
When a mission is established, a duration of the main mission is also determined. In the case of NASA InSight this period started from the landing, in November 2018, until November 2020. If the lander had it lasted for that period of time, it would still have been a success (although we have been used to missions that last much longer, like NASA Curiosity). We now know that the duration was twice as long.
Budget is an essential element when it comes to missions of this type. Developing additional components has a very high cost (you have to produce, test, certify) e “making it last twice as long leads to much more than double the costs”, as mentioned in the past. Mechanical elements then add mass, can fail and were not needed precisely because the lander was built to last as long as expected. Using a RTG was excluded in terms of costs and also because the necessary plutonium was not available at the time. We must also consider that InSight was born on the projects of the Phoenix lander, this makes us understand how much the NASA tried to “cut costs” to fit within the budget.
A hope for future missions with solar panels comes from Zhurong, the Chinese rover. The latter uses a new polymer with a structure similar to lotus leaves on the panels that should make the Martian dust slip away. However, its functioning is still being verified (although it seems to have done an excellent job so far).
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