The US space agency, NASA, announced statementabout losing contact with its “Insight” probe located on the surface of Mars, after four years spent exploring the red planet.
And the day before yesterday, Tuesday, the probe’s official page on Twitter published the latest image sent by “Insight”.
My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send. Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will – but I’ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me. pic.twitter.com/wkYKww15kQ
— NASA InSight (@NASAInSight) December 19, 2022
“Farewell to a spacecraft is always sad, but Insight’s amazing scientific results are cause for joy,” NASA Associate Administrator Thomas Zurbuken said in a statement.
Equipped with a French-made ultra-sensitive seismometer, InSight recorded more than 1,300 “shakes on Mars”, some of which were caused by meteorites.
A year ago, a meteorite that was so powerful that it caused ice blocks to scatter on the surface of Mars.
The end of this mission was expected, as the remaining energy of the probe became low due to the Martian dust accumulated on its solar panels, which was what NASA had expected from the beginning.
NASA received the last notification from “Insight” on December 15, and up to the 18th of the same month, the US agency tried to contact it twice, but to no avail, prompting the teams to conclude that the probe’s batteries were dead.
NASA said in its statement that it is continuing to try to capture any notification, but that this possibility is “unlikely.”
The mission provided additional information about the inner layers of Mars and its liquid core, in addition to the weather in parts of this planet, in addition to seismic activity.
Scientists were able, for example, to confirm that the Martian core is liquid, and to determine the thickness of the Martian crust, which turned out to be less dense than previously thought.
The “Insight” probe landed on the surface of Mars in November 2018, and was operating in cooperation with the National Center for Space Studies in France.
However, the mission failed to achieve one of its goals, which is to plant an instrument at a depth of a few meters below the surface of Mars to measure the temperature of this planet, but the soil composition at the landing site prevented the instrument from being planted as expected.
And after it was installed at a depth of about 40 centimeters, the tool was able to provide “valuable data on the physical and thermal properties of the Martian soil,” according to NASA.