After four years of probing the bowels of the planet Mars, the InSight probe will have to end its operations this summer. The dust that has accumulated on its solar panels is to blame.
But the data collected will remain used by scientists around the world for many years to continue to improve our understanding of planet formation, NASA said in making the announcement Tuesday.
Notably equipped with an ultra-sensitive seismometer, InSight has recorded more than 1300 ‘Marsquakes’, including one of magnitude 5 just two weeks ago, the biggest so far, a nice reward just before the end clap .
In July, the seismometer must indeed be turned off. The energy level of the probe will then be checked approximately once a day and some photographs may still be taken. The mission will be completely stopped by the end of 2022.
Martian dust has accumulated on the two solar panels, each measuring regarding 2.2 meters wide. InSight, which already only works with a tenth of the energy it enjoyed each day at the start, will therefore soon find its batteries flat.
Three other robots
About a year ago, they had carried out a somewhat surprising cleaning, using dust itself. The robot arm had dug into the ground, and gently dropped Martian soil above the robot. A part was thus carried by the wind on the solar panels, releasing a little their surface. This technique had made it possible to prolong the mission.
InSight, one of the four robots currently on the Red Planet, along with the American Perseverance and Curiosity and Chinese Zhurong rovers, arrived on Mars in November 2018.
Its seismometer, made in France, has since enabled great advances. It made it possible to map the interior of Mars. Scientists have thus been able to confirm that the core of Mars is indeed liquid. They were also able to determine the thickness of the Martian crust, less dense than previously thought and probably made up of three layers.
The InSight mission also experienced a failure: an instrument had to be buried a few meters deep below the surface to take the temperature of the planet. But due to the composition of the ground where the robot landed, this ‘mole’ might not sink as expected.
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