![]() Read more: Red planet rumbles: NASA’s recordings of ‘marsquakes’ let us listen to the martian heartbeat It even recorded quakes from meteoroid impacts.Įarlier this summer, the lander had so little remaining power that the mission turned off all of InSight’s other science instruments to keep the seismometer running. InSight’s seismometer has detected more than 1,300 marsquakes since the lander touched down in November 2018, the largest measuring a magnitude five. ![]() The lander data has yielded details about Mars’ interior layers, its liquid core, the surprisingly variable remnants beneath the surface of its mostly extinct magnetic field, weather on this part of Mars and lots of quake activity. The most important of the final steps with the InSight mission is storing its trove of data and making it accessible to researchers worldwide. InSight’s team is looking at several tasks before it is time to say adieu, like preserving data, managing the power optimally and packing it up. As my time winds down on Mars, my team is helping make sure scientists can get the most out of everything I’ve gathered. The day is coming when I’ll fall silent, ending my nearly four Earth years (over two Mars years) of studying the Red Planet. InSight’s team expects the lander to have become inoperative by December. Four years later, NASA announced that the lander was gradually losing power as its solar panels were gathering dust. Read more: Marsquakes: InSight lander shows active faults in the planet’s crust It is the first outer space robotic explorer to study in-depth the “inner space” of Mars: The crust, mantle and core. InSight is short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport. The fairly small group of 25-30 people - compared to other Mars missions - has begun taking steps to wind down the mission. The team handling InSight is trying to make sure the lander is operational for as long as possible. Its InSight lander, which has been losing power, is expected to shut down in a few weeks. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is preparing to say goodbye to its spacecraft designed to explore the deep interiors of Mars.
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