NASA's InSight Mars Lander's death approaches, and the space agency is preparing for the funeral.
NASA recently announced that InSight's power generation has declined to the point that it only has weeks left to live as windblown Martian dust continued to build upon its solar panels.
InSight was sent to the Red Planet on May 5, 2018, at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California aboard an Atlas V-401 rocket and landed on the planet's Elysium Planitia on Nov. 26, 2018.
Mars InSight Lander 'Death' Details
A picture of NASA's InSight Mars Lander on April 24, 2022. Notice the thick Martian dust covering its two solar panels.
NASA mentioned in its announcement that its Mars InSight Lander only has a few weeks in it due to the accumulated dust blown onto its solar panels, severely affecting its ability to power itself.
The space agency also added that it had done its best to prolong its life, but getting the previously mentioned period is the best it can do.
According to NASA's InSight operations team, it turned off all of the lander's other science instruments to keep the crucial seismometer running. It also switched off InSight's fault protection system, which would have automatically shut down the seismometer if InSight's power generation was dangerously low.
Bruce Banerdt, NASA InSight Mission's principal investigator, InSight is running on less than 20% of the original power generating capacity. As such, NASA can't afford to run more science instruments 24/7 without draining more of what's left of InSight's power.
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As a result, while NASA's InSight operations team continues to get as much information as it can from the lander, it is also preparing to wind down InSight's mission and lay it to rest on the surface of the Red Planet.
To do so, NASA's InSight team has begun storing the vast amount of data InSight transmitted about Mars' interior and making it accessible to researchers worldwide.
These pieces of data include information about Mars' liquid core, the variable remnants found under the surface of its mostly extinct magnetic field, and most notably, marsquake activities.
InSight also transmitted information on the weather on its part of Mars back to Earth.
How Will We Know Of InSight's 'Death'
NASA will declare InSight's mission (and subsequent death) over when it misses two consecutive communication sessions with the spacecraft orbiting Mars, such as the space agency's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, per Space.com.
However, this will only be the case if InSight itself is the one not responding to NASA's check-ins with it, per NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory network manager Roy Gladden.
Even after InSight misses two check-ins, NASA will continue to re-establish communications with it just in case. However, if it has ceased to respond, then InSight's mission is well and truly over.
Despite that, NASA's InSight team will continue to gather and store data while the lander is still operational.
"We'll keep making science measurements as long as we can," Banerdt said. "We're at Mars' mercy. Weather on Mars is not rain and snow; weather on Mars is dust and wind."
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