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Final messages from the Mars lander will bring tears to your eyes | Digital Trends Spanish


The latest image from NASA’s InSight lander shows the wind and heat shield covering some of its science instruments. POT

It had been known for some time that the lander NASA insight it was nearing the end of its Mars operations after four years of service. And it seems that his final communication with Earth has just taken place.

The lander’s ability to maintain power has been affected by a gradual buildup of dust on the lander’s two 7-foot-wide solar arrays.

In a tweet tinged with sadness, InSight’s Twitter account this week posted what is likely to be its last image of the red planet before the rover finally shuts down.

“My power is really low so this may be the last image I can send,” InSight said in the tweet. Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been productive and serene. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will, but I’ll be saying goodbye here soon. Thank you for staying with me.”

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. Thank you for staying with me. pic.twitter.com/wkYKww15kQ

— NASA InSight (@NASAInSight) December 19, 2022

In another tweet Shared in late November, InSight said: “I’ve been lucky enough to live on two planets. Four years ago, I arrived safely at the second, to the delight of my family at the first. Thanks to my team for sending me on this journey of discovery. I hope I made you proud.”

The NASA said on Wednesday that it will officially declare the mission over when InSight loses two consecutive communication sessions with the spacecraft orbiting Mars, part of the Mars Relay Network, as long as the cause of the lost communication is the lander itself. After that, the space agency said its Deep Space Network will keep listening for a while, “just in case.”

InSight launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on May 5, 2018, arriving at Mars six months later on November 26.

Unlike other Mars rovers such as Perseverance and Curiosity, InSight does not have wheels and therefore remained in the same location on Elysium Planitia throughout its mission.

An illustration showing NASA’s InSight lander with its instruments deployed on the Martian surface. Several of the sensors used to study Martian weather are visible on its deck, including the inlet for an air pressure sensor and weather sensor arms facing east and west.

NASA said that unlike the missions the rovers are still carrying out, InSight’s science activities were designed to be “more like a marathon than a sprint.”

The space agency added how over the past four years, “data from the lander has yielded details about the inner layers of Mars, its liquid core, the surprisingly variable remnants below the surface of its mostly extinct magnetic field, the weather in this part of Mars and a lot of seismic activity.

Bruce Banerdt, principal investigator for the InSight mission, said earlier this year that one of the robot’s legacies is that it “really demonstrates the technique of seismology for planetary science,” adding: “We’ve been able to map the interior of Mars for the first time in history.”

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