NASA’s InSight Mars lander is slowly declining and is expected to complete its scientific performance later this summer. In December, the InSight team expected the earth’s operator to be depleted, completing a campaign that has identified more than 1,300 earthquakes – most recently, a magnitude 5 earthquake on May 4 – and Red Planet earthquake zones.
The data collected from the quake have allowed scientists to estimate the depth and shape of the Mars crust, the mantle, and the core. In addition, InSight (short for Internal Inspection using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) recorded the most important weather data and researched the remains of Mars’ ancient magnetic field.”InSight has transformed our understanding of the inner workings of rocky planets and set the stage for future missions,” said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division. “We can apply what we have learned about the inner structure of Mars to Earth, the Moon, Venus, and even the rocky planets in other solar systems.”
InSight landed on Mars Nov. 26, 2018. Equipped with a pair of daily panels 7 feet (2.2 meters) wide, it was designed to achieve the main scientific goals of its first year of Mars (approximately two years on Earth). Having done that, the spacecraft is now in expanded activity, and its solar panels have been generating less energy as they continue to pile up dust.
Due to the reduced power, the team will soon put the arm of the cleaner robot in its rest area (called “retirement pose”) for the last time later this month. Originally intended to use a seismometer and a thermometer monitor, the arm played an unexpected role in the campaign: As well as using it to help bury temperature research after Martian adhesive soil provided a thorough investigation, the team used the arm as a new way to remove dust from solar panels. As a result, the seismometer was able to operate more frequently than it would otherwise have, leading to new discoveries.
Solar panels
When InSight arrives, solar panels produce about 5,000 watt hours per Martian day, or sol – enough to power an electric oven for an hour and 40 minutes. Now, they produce about 500 watt hours per solar – enough to power the same oven for just 10 minutes.
Additionally, seasonal changes begin at Elysium Planitia, the site of InSight on Mars. In the next few months, there will be more dust in the air, reducing sunlight – and energy for the cleaner. While previous attempts have removed some dust, the mission will require a more powerful dust-cleaning event, such as a “dust storm” (passing storm), in order to reverse the current trend.
“We were hoping for a dust-up as we saw it happen many times in the Spirit and Opportunity rover,” said Bruce Banerdt, InSight’s chief investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, who led the campaign. “That is still possible, but the force is low enough that our focus is to use the full science that we can still collect.”If only 25% of the InSight sweeping panels were clean, the one using the earth could get 1,000 watts per sol – enough to continue collecting science. However, with the current rate declining power, InSight’s non-seismic tools will not normally open after the end of May.
The force is determined by the seismometer, which will operate at certain times of the day, such as at night, when the wind is low and earthquakes are easy to “hear with a seismometer.” The seismometer itself is expected to go by the end of the summer, completing the science phase of the work.By then, the landowner will have enough energy to work, take pictures from time to time and communicate with the Earth. But the team expects that by December, power will be low enough that one dayInSight will simply stop responding.
More about Mission
JPL holds InSight’s NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA’s Discovery Program, run by the Marshall Space Flight Center agency in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, which includes its own navigation platform and lander, and supports spacecraft operations in this mission.
A number of European partners, including France’s Center National d’ÉtudesSpatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), support the InSight mission. CNES provided NASA with a Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) tool, and a key investigator for IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Key contributions for SEIS come from IPGP; Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR has provided the Thermal Flow and Real Material (HP3) Package tool, with significant donations from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronica in Poland. The Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) of Spain provided heat and air sensors.
