È l’ultima immagine della NASA InSight Mars Lander? Credito: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Sappiamo da tempo che il La fine era vicina per il lander Mars Insight della NASA, poiché l’alimentazione della navicella continuava a diminuire a causa della polvere portata dal vento che si accumulava sui pannelli solari. Ora, sembra che quel giorno sia arrivato. il[{” attribute=””>NASA InSight Twitter account’s latest message revealed what might be the last image sent from the spacecraft, as Insight revealed its “power’s really low.”
This was followed by a Tweet from the NASA JPL Twitter handle that reported that on December 18, the InSight Mars Lander “did not respond to communications from Earth.”
NASA’s Mars Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission launched on May 5, 2018, from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. After a 300-million-mile journey to Mars, InSIght touched down on the Red Planet near the equator on the western side of a flat, smooth expanse of lava called Elysium Planitia on November 26.
The mission’s science goals were to uncover how a rocky body forms and evolves to become a planet by investigating the interior structure and composition of Mars and to determine the rate of Martian tectonic activity and meteorite impacts. InSIght achieved its primary science goals in its first Martian year (~2 Earth years), and NASA extended its mission to focus on producing a long-duration, high-quality seismic dataset.
During its time on Mars, InSight’s seismometer felt multiple meteor impacts, detected more than 1,300 marsquakes, and shed new light on the Red Planet’s interior:
