NASA InSight: “I’ll be quiet soon.” The Mars probe has removed the dust

And it lasted much longer than anyone could have guessed. NASA’s Unmanned Landing Vehicle Has an Intriguing Name insight He started his mission on the red planet May 5, 2018. NASA experts assumed that it would not work more than two years. It turns out that his mission has been extended twice but everything is over. InSight sent a desperate message from Mars that it’s about to stop broadcasting. the reason is Mars dustThat flooded InSight’s solar panels and the craft started losing its ability to recharge its batteries. Recent sandstorms on Mars have proven devastating to InSight.

NASA tweeted a very emotional post about the end of InSight’s life.

The landing mission will likely be completed in a couple of weeks. NASA experts are trying to save him and are trying to clean the solar panels from dust, but Insight does not have enough power for this process. Even turning off all the other landing gear did not help – The voltage is still too low to remove ghost dust. Despite this, the probe still sends back images of the surface of the Red Planet, although each image may be the “last”.

When InSight began its mission to Mars in 2018, its solar panels were very efficient and were producing 5000 watts/hour per day. Now they are able to generate 500 watts per hour for all Martian days. – This level of power can operate an electric oven for less than 110 minutes – Wrote in a NASA statement. Despite this, the probe’s camera in recent days has been able to record the amazing sunset on the surface of Mars.

unmanned landing vehicle insight He was sent to Mars in 2018 as part of the program Discovery. The probe conducted four years of geophysical research, including being able to record seismic tremors of the Red Planet. The intriguing name of the Landing Vehicle InSight is an acronym made up of the initials of the words for the sentence “Inland exploration using seismic investigations, geodesy and thermal transport. ( Crowded. – Inland exploration using seismic, geodesy and heat transfer surveys).

Its mission cost NASA $993 million and ranks as one of the most successful Mars research ever.