La NASA si prepara a dire “arrivederci” alla navicella spaziale Insight che ha fatto la storia su Marte

Dai un’occhiata più da vicino a cosa serve per completare una missione mentre l’alimentazione alla navicella InSight continua a diminuire.

chiudere la fine a[{” attribute=””>NASA’s Mars InSight lander. The day is fast approaching when the spacecraft will fall silent, ending its history-making mission to reveal secrets of the Red Planet’s interior. Since the spacecraft’s power generation continues to decline as windblown dust on its solar panels thickens, the engineering team has already taken steps to continue as long as possible with what power remains. Despite these efforts, it won’t be long now, as the end is expected to come in the next few weeks.

Although InSight’s tightknit 25-to-30-member operations team – a small group compared to other Mars missions – continues to squeeze the most they can out of InSight, they’ve also begun taking steps to wind down the mission.

Here’s a glimpse of what that looks like.

This is NASA InSight’s first full selfie on Mars. It displays the lander’s solar panels and deck. On top of the deck are its science instruments, weather sensor booms, and UHF antenna. The selfie was taken on December 6, 2018 (Sol 10). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Preserving Data

With InSight (short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport), the most important of the final steps of the mission is storing its trove of data and making it accessible to researchers around the world. Already, the data from the lander 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. More insights are sure to follow, as scientists continue to sift through the data.

InSight’s seismometer, provided by France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), has detected more than 1,300 marsquakes since the lander touched down in November 2018. The largest quake it detected measured a magnitude 5. It even recorded quakes from meteoroid impacts. Observing how the seismic waves from those quakes change as they travel through the planet offers an invaluable glimpse into Mars’ interior. Beyond that, these observations also provide a better understanding of how all rocky worlds form, including Earth and its Moon.

NASA’s InSight Mars lander took this final selfie on April 24, 2022, the 1,211th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The lander is covered with far more dust than it was in its first selfie, taken in December 2018, not long after landing. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

“Finally, we can see Mars as a planet with layers, with different thicknesses, compositions,” said Bruce Banerdt of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, the mission’s principal investigator. “We’re starting to really tease out the details. Now it’s not just this enigma; it’s actually a living, breathing planet.”

The seismometer readings will join the only other set of extraterrestrial seismic data, from the Apollo lunar missions, in NASA’s Planetary Data System. They will also go into an international archive run by the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology, which houses “all the terrestrial seismic network data locations,” said JPL’s Sue Smrekar, InSight’s deputy principal investigator. “Now, we also have one on Mars.”

Smrekar said the data is expected to continue yielding discoveries for decades.

The rocket that launched NASA’s InSight lander to Mars in 2018 is seen at Vandenberg Air Force Base, now called Vandenberg Space Force Base. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Charles Babir

Managing Power

Earlier this summer, the lander had so little power remaining that the mission turned off all of InSight’s other science instruments in order to keep the seismometer running. They even turned off the fault protection system that would otherwise automatically shut down the seismometer if the system detects that the lander’s power generation is dangerously low.

“We were down to less than 20% of the original generating capacity,” said Banerdt. “That means we can’t afford to run the instruments around the clock.”

Recently, after a regional dust storm added to the lander’s dust-covered solar panels, the team decided to turn off the seismometer altogether in order to save power. Now that the storm is over, the seismometer is collecting data again. However, the mission expects the lander only has enough power for a few more weeks.

Of the seismometer’s array of sensors, only the most sensitive were still operating, said Liz Barrett, who leads science and instrument operations for the team at JPL, adding, “We’re pushing it to the very end.”

confezioni doppie

Il membro silenzioso del team è ForeSight, il modello di ingegneria a grandezza naturale di InSight presso JPL Laboratorio di strumenti in loco. Gli ingegneri hanno utilizzato ForeSight per esercitarsi su come InSight potrebbe posizionare strumenti scientifici sulla superficie di Marte utilizzando il braccio robotico del rover, Tecniche di prova Per inserire la sonda di temperatura della sonda Terreno marziano appiccicososviluppando metodi Riduzione del rumore Rilevato da un sismometro.

Forsight sarà riposto in una scatola di immagazzinaggio. “Lo riempiremo con amorevole cura”, ha detto Banerdt. “Era un ottimo strumento, una grande compagna per noi in tutta questa missione.”

In uno spazio di prova presso il Jet Propulsion Laboratory, gli ingegneri si stanno allenando per implementare gli strumenti InSight utilizzando ForeSight, una replica a grandezza naturale del lander che sarà mobilitato una volta completata la missione. Molti ingegneri indossano occhiali da sole per bloccare le luci gialle luminose che imitano la luce solare mentre appaiono su Marte. Credito: NASA/JPL-Caltech/IPGP

Annuncio di fine missione

Quando InSight perde due sessioni di contatto consecutive con il veicolo spaziale in orbita attorno a Marte, parte di Rete di collegamento di MarteLa NASA annuncerà la fine della missione. Tuttavia, questa regola si applica solo se la causa della perdita di connessione è la sonda stessa, ha affermato l’amministratore di rete Roy Gladden di JPL. Quindi, Rete spaziale della NASA Continuerà ad ascoltare per un po’, per ogni evenienza.

Tuttavia, non ci saranno azioni eroiche per riconnettersi con InSight. Sebbene un evento di salvataggio della missione, come un forte vento che soffia per pulire i pannelli, non sia impossibile, è considerato del tutto improbabile.

Nel frattempo, finché InSight rimarrà in contatto, il team continuerà a raccogliere dati. “Continueremo a fare misurazioni scientifiche il più a lungo possibile”, ha affermato Banerdt. “Siamo alla mercé di Marte. Il tempo su Marte non è pioggia e neve; il tempo su Marte è polvere e vento”.

Maggiori informazioni sulla missione

Il Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) della NASA gestisce il programma InSight della NASA Science Mission Directorate. InSight fa parte del Discovery Program della NASA, gestito dal Marshall Space Flight Center dell’agenzia a Huntsville, in Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space di Denver ha costruito la navicella spaziale InSight, incluso un palco da crociera e un lander, e supporta le operazioni della navicella spaziale della missione.

Numerosi partner europei, tra cui il Centro nazionale francese per gli studi spaziali (CNES) e il Centro aerospaziale tedesco (DLR), stanno supportando la missione InSight. Il National Center for Space Studies ha fornito alla NASA lo strumento Inner Structure Seismic Experiment (SEIS), con il ricercatore principale dell’IPGP (Institut de Physiques d’Institut d’Institut d’Institut d’Institut d’Institut du Physique nel mondo a Parigi). Contributi significativi al Sistema Comune di Informazione Ambientale sono venuti dall’IPGP; Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germania; Politecnico Federale Svizzero (ETH Zurigo) in Svizzera;[{” attribute=””>Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors, and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) supplied a passive laser retroreflector.