Tag: lander
‘InSight’s legacy will live on’: NASA says goodbye to Mars lander
Since its launch in 2018, the InSight lander has helped reveal secrets of the red planet’s interior.
Read more: ‘InSight’s legacy will live on’: NASA says goodbye to Mars lander
‘InSight’s legacy will live on’: NASA says goodbye to Mars lander
Since its launch in 2018, the InSight lander has helped reveal secrets of the red planet’s interior.
Read more: ‘InSight’s legacy will live on’: NASA says goodbye to Mars lander
NASA declares Mars InSight lander mission officially over
NASA’s InSight lander loses power, enters retirement on Mars
On Mars, another machine just bit the dust. The marsquake-detecting, photo-snapping InSight lander has now officially completed its mission and will now spend its retirement in the same place it spent its career — sitting on a flat plain on the Martian surface, as dust slowly accumulates on its solar panels and other instruments.
We’ve known this was coming for a while. InSight’s solar panels, which generate electricity for the lander, have been getting covered with dust ever since they unfurled. The mission, officially known as the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight), was expected to run out of power this summer, but a spate of good weather bought it a few additional months of work on…
NASA officially retires its InSight Mars lander
After two consecutive failed attempts to re-establish contact, NASA on Wednesday officially called an end to its InSight Mars mission. On December 15th, the lander made its final transmission to Earth. NASA said it would make the tough decision to call the mission dead after two failed communication attempts earlier this year. The agency will continue to listen for a signal “just in case” but notes the odds of that occurring at this point are “considered unlikely.”
NASA shared the news of InSight’s impending demise on Monday when it posted the lander’s final selfie — taken on April 24th, 2022 — to Twitter. Since arriving on the martian surface in 2018, InSight has gradually accumulated dust on its solar panels. Earlier this year, NASA predicted the debris would become too thick for the lander to power itself.
“My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send,” InSight’s final tweet reads. “Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will – but I’ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me.”
My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send. Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will – but I’ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me. pic.twitter.com/wkYKww15kQ
— NASA InSight (@NASAInSight) December 19, 2022
NASA is being modest when it says InSight’s time on Mars was productive. For more than four years, the lander – its name short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport – collected data about the planet’s deep interior. Using a highly sensitive seismometer, InSight detected 1,319 “marsquakes,” including at least one caused by a meteoroid impact. Using that information, NASA scientists concluded the core of Mars is about half the size of Earth’s. InSight also sent back daily weather reports and gave humans our first chance to hear some of the sounds of the Red Planet.
“InSight has more than lived up to its name. As a scientist who’s spent a career studying Mars, it’s been a thrill to see what the lander has achieved, thanks to an entire team of people across the globe who helped make this mission a success,” said Laurie Leshin, the director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the unit that managed the mission. “Yes, it’s sad to say goodbye, but InSight’s legacy will live on, informing and inspiring.”
NASA’s InSight lander sends emotional farewell from Mars
NASA’s InSight lander says goodbye from Mars
This is likely the final photo that NASA’s Mars InSight lander will ever send back to Earth. The robot has been snapping pics and gathering data about the Martian environment since landing on the planet in November 2018 — and it’s been steadily accumulating dust on its solar panels that entire time. As NASA predicted earlier this year, the layer of debris has finally become too thick for the solar panels to operate. The InSight Twitter account officially said goodbye on December 19th with a final image from the surface of Mars.
“My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send,” the tweet reads. “Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will – but I’ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me.”
You’re welcome, metal astronaut.
My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send. Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will – but I’ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me. pic.twitter.com/wkYKww15kQ
— NASA InSight (@NASAInSight) December 19, 2022
InSight touched down on Mars on November 26th, 2018. It set up a seismometer on the Martian surface and collected data about marsquakes, which helped NASA scientists compile a clearer picture of the planet’s interior structure. Over the past four years, InSight provided data on more than 500 quakes and at least one meteoroid impact. From these reports, NASA researchers concluded Mars’ core is about half the size of Earth’s and likely composed of lighter elements than previously thought.
NASA announced in May 2022 that InSight would likely go dark by the end of the summer, due to the dust settling on the lander’s solar panels. InSight had recently celebrated its fourth anniversary on Mars when it stopped communicating with NASA. In a blog update on December 19th, the agency said the following:
“On Dec. 18, 2022, NASA’s InSight did not respond to communications from Earth. The lander’s power has been declining for months, as expected, and it’s assumed InSight may have reached its end of operations. It’s unknown what prompted the change in its energy; the last time the mission contacted the spacecraft was on Dec. 15, 2022. The mission will continue to try and contact InSight.”
NASA’s Orion capsule returns to Earth as ispace’s lunar lander takes flight
Sunday was a landmark day for both commercial and public space ventures, with NASA’s Orion capsule returning to Earth just hours after the launch of a privately funded and built lunar lander by Japanese company ispace. The two missions — the conclusion of NASA’s Artemis I and ispace’s Mission 1 — are some of the […]
NASA’s Orion capsule returns to Earth as ispace’s lunar lander takes flight by Aria Alamalhodaei originally published on TechCrunch
SpaceX Launches Moon-Bound Private Japanese Lander Following Delays
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched a highly anticipated payload on Sunday, which included ispace’s Hakuto-R spacecraft and NASA’s Lunar Flashlight.