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The mission Insight it lasted just four years. And even if since the arrival on Mars on November 26, 2018, the lander American never moved from his landing site, a valley in the volcanic region known as Elysium Planitia, his visit to the Red Planet proved extremely fruitful. From there, in fact, he collected precious data on the activity seismic Martiana, on the composition of inner layers of the planet, about his disappearance magnetosphere and on the processes that gave birth to both. The short adventure of Insight is destined to end soon, because at the end of next December the mission will be officially declared over, due to the problems encountered by the solar panels from which the lander draws energy. On this occasion, we retrace the main stages of his history, and the incredible discoveries she gave us.
The mission
Insight stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport. A rather explicit name on the purpose of the expedition: to study the interior of the red planet using the waves seismici heat flows and the geodesy (accurate analysis of the structure of the planet and its atmosphere). It is therefore a static research, which aims to collect information like an earthquake station. For this reason, unlike other Martian missions, it does not provide a rover or some other vehicle, but simply a lander equipped with all the sensors necessary for observations.
Despite the relative simplicity of the undertaking, it was a relatively unfortunate expedition. Since the departure, originally scheduled for 2016and then postponed to 2018 due to problems with the seismograph. Bad luck did not abandon Insight even upon landing: at the moment of taking action it was in fact the turn of a scientific instrument, theHeat Flow and Physical Properties Packagea sensor for measuring the heat flow that should have been placed at approx 5 meters of depth, and that instead it was not possible to use due to the excessive softness of the soil that prevented the drilling tools from operating correctly.
In the end, the energy generators also came to betray it: the lander it is indeed equipped with ample panels solar with which it recharges its batteries, which had to surrender to the toughness of the Martian sand, which covered them, reducing the production of electricity by about 10 times. Not being equipped to solve the problem, and not having had the luck of others probes NASA which in the past have been cleaned up by sudden gusts of wind (the so-called dust devil), the lander it is therefore set to close its operations in December of this year. Net of the many problems, however, the American space agency has nothing to complain about, given that in its four years on Mars it has made it possible to obtain invaluable information.
The martemoti
Insight was in fact the first space mission to be able to demonstrate the existence of martemotithat is, of aseismic activity on Mars. The first Martian earthquake was recorded by the lander’s sensors in April 2019, 128 days after landing. To date, it has recorded over 1,300, managing to establish the epicenter of the tremors in about fifty cases. Most of the marshals identified by Insight come from a region of the planet called Cerberus Fossaean area about 1,500 kilometers from the lander, showing signs of intense activities volcanic over the past two million years. Indeed, the infiltration of should be the cause of the tremors magma linked to the volcanism of the area. And even if for the most part it is about earthquakes relatively mildwith magnitude between two And three (the lightest in many cases turned out to be vibrations of the ground produced by the enormous power of the Martian winds), the most recent reached instead a magnitude slightly less than fivewhich means that a human explorer present in the epicenter area would have clearly felt the earth shaking under their feet.
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