Issued on: 21/12/2022 – 20:44
Washington (AFP) – NASA on Wednesday said goodbye to the InSight lander that spent four years probing the interior of Mars.
The US space agency said mission control had failed to contact the spacecraft in two consecutive attempts, leading to the conclusion that its solar-powered batteries had run out of power .
“InSight may be retiring, but its legacy, and its discoveries of Mars’ deep interior, will live on,” NASA said.
The space agency said it will continue to listen for a signal from the lander, which last communicated with Earth a week ago, but is considered unlikely after months of Martian dust accumulated on its two solar panels, diminishing the its power
“We’ve thought of InSight as our friend and colleague on Mars for the past four years, so it’s hard to say goodbye,” said Bruce Banerdt, the mission’s principal investigator at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. “But he has earned his well-deserved retirement.”
InSight was one of four missions currently on the Red Planet, along with the American rovers Perseverance and Curiosity and China’s Zhurong.
It arrived on Mars in November 2018 to study the interior of the planet and its seismometer, made in France, paved the way for major advances.
Seismic waves, which vary depending on the materials they travel through, offer a picture of the interior of the planet.
For example, scientists were able to confirm that the core of Mars is liquid and determine the thickness of the Martian crust, which is less dense than previously thought and probably consists of three layers.
The lander gave details about the weather on Mars and lots of earthquake activity.
Its highly sensitive seismometer detected 1,319 earthquakes, some caused by meteoroid impacts.
“With InSight, seismology was the focus of a mission beyond Earth for the first time since the Apollo missions, when astronauts took seismometers to the Moon,” said Philippe Lognonne of the Institute of Physique du Globe de Paris. “We broke new ground.”
An illustration provided by NASA of the Mars InSight landing © – / NASA/AFP/File
NASA managed to extend the lander mission earlier this year by using its robotic arm and a small spoon to gently remove dust from the solar panels.
However, not all of InSight’s science operations went smoothly, such as when a probe called “the mole” had trouble burrowing beneath the surface to take the planet’s temperature due to the composition of the soil where the robot landed.
The probe, provided by the German Aerospace Center, was eventually buried slightly below the surface and provided valuable data on the physical and thermal properties of the Martian soil, NASA said.
© 2022 AFP