Two years after NASA retired the InSight lander, scientists continue to use the vehicle to learn more about Mars.
InSight was retired in 2022 after having stopped communicating with Earth. The silence began during the lander’s extended mission and was expected. The dust had accumulated on the lander’s solar panels, preventing its batteries from recharging and ultimately leading to its demise. Hoping that a dust devil might clear the networks, NASA listened for a signal from the lander, but with no sign of InSight in the past two years, that effort will end at the end of 2024.
However, scientists have kept an eye on the lander using images taken by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). These images have helped scientists better understand how dust works on the surface of Mars.
Ingrid Daubar, member of the scientific team at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island said“Even though we no longer hear from InSight, it continues to tell us about Mars.
“By monitoring how much dust accumulates on the surface – and how much is sucked up by wind and dust devils – we learn more about wind, the dust cycle and other processes that shape the planet.”
Dust plays an essential role in the atmosphere and landscape of Mars. It can block sunlight and shape the surface. And this has implications for future missions; In addition to covering solar panels, dust can wreak havoc when it enters mechanical parts.
The imaging helped scientists understand how quickly the markings around craters can fade over time as dust covers them, giving an idea of their age. InSight used rockets to land in 2018, leaving marks visible from orbit. These marks fade as InSight’s solar panels gradually acquire the same reddish-brown hue as the rest of the Martian surface.
InSight landed in November 2018. Although it was the first to detect earthquakes, according to NASA, its mission Did not go entirely as planned. It was also supposed to send a “mole” five meters from the Martian surface to measure the internal temperature of the planet, but the unexpected habit of the soil clumping around the device ended the experiment, and NASA announcement he gave up trying to coax the mole on Mars at the start of 2021
The lander is no longer active but continues to prove useful to scientists studying the movement of dust on Mars.
Daubar said: “It’s a little bittersweet watching InSight now. It was a successful mission that produced a lot of high-quality science data. Of course it would have been nice if this continued forever, but we knew that wouldn’t happen. ” ®