NASA se prepara para dizer “adeus” à espaçonave Insight que fez história em Marte

Dê uma olhada mais de perto no que é necessário para completar uma missão à medida que o fornecimento de energia para a espaçonave InSight continua a diminuir.

fim próximo 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.”

pacotes duplos

O membro silencioso da equipe é o ForeSight, o modelo de engenharia em tamanho real da InSight no JPL Laboratório de ferramentas no local. Os engenheiros usaram o ForeSight para praticar como o InSight poderia colocar instrumentos científicos na superfície de Marte usando o braço robótico do rover, Técnicas de teste Para colocar a sonda de temperatura da sonda em Solo pegajoso de Martedesenvolvendo métodos Redução de ruído Captado por um sismógrafo.

Forsight será colocado em uma caixa de armazenamento. “Vamos preenchê-lo com carinho”, disse Banerdt. “Ela foi uma grande ferramenta, uma grande companheira para nós em toda essa missão.”

Em um espaço de teste no Jet Propulsion Laboratory, engenheiros estão treinando para implantar instrumentos InSight usando o ForeSight, uma réplica em tamanho real do módulo de pouso que será mobilizado assim que a missão for concluída. Muitos engenheiros usam óculos de sol para bloquear as luzes amarelas brilhantes que imitam a luz do sol à medida que aparecem em Marte. Crédito: NASA/JPL-Caltech/IPGP

Anúncio de Fim de Missão

Quando a InSight perde duas sessões consecutivas de contato com a espaçonave em órbita de Marte, parte do Rede de retransmissão de MarteA NASA anunciará o fim da missão. No entanto, esta regra só se aplica se a causa da perda de conexão for a própria sonda, disse o administrador de rede Roy Gladden do JPL. Então, Rede de Espaço Profundo da NASA Ele vai continuar ouvindo por um tempo, apenas no caso.

No entanto, não haverá ações heróicas para se reconectar com o InSight. Embora um evento para salvar a missão, como um vento forte soprando para limpar os painéis, não seja impossível, é considerado completamente improvável.

Enquanto isso, enquanto a InSight permanecer em contato, a equipe continuará coletando dados. “Continuaremos a fazer medições científicas pelo maior tempo possível”, disse Banerdt. “Estamos à mercê de Marte. O clima em Marte não é chuva e neve; o clima em Marte é poeira e vento.”

Mais sobre a missão

O Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) da NASA gerencia o programa InSight da Diretoria de Missões Científicas da NASA. O InSight faz parte do Discovery Program da NASA, que é gerenciado pelo Marshall Space Flight Center da agência em Huntsville, Alabama. A Lockheed Martin Space de Denver construiu a espaçonave InSight, incluindo um estágio de cruzeiro e aterrissagem, e apoia as operações da espaçonave da missão.

Vários parceiros europeus, incluindo o Centro Nacional Francês de Estudos Espaciais (CNES) e o Centro Aeroespacial Alemão (DLR), estão apoiando a missão InSight. O Centro Nacional de Estudos Espaciais forneceu o instrumento Inner Structure Seismic Experiment (SEIS) à NASA, com o investigador principal do IPGP (Institut de Physiques d’Institut d’Institut d’Institut d’Institut d’Institut du Physique no Mundial em Paris). Contribuições significativas para o Sistema Comum de Informação Ambiental vieram do IPGP; Instituto Max Planck para Pesquisa do Sistema Solar (MPS) na Alemanha; Instituto Federal Suíço de Tecnologia (ETH Zurique) na Suíça;[{” 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.