The InSight Martian lander doomed to dust

InSight, NASA’s Mars lander, captured one of its two solar arrays itself, covered in dust, on April 24, on the 1,211th Martian day (sol) of its mission. JPL-CALTECH/NASA

On May 4, InSight, NASA’s Mars lander, recorded a magnitude 5 quake, the strongest of some 1,300 tremors captured by its instruments since it arrived on the Red Planet in November 2018. But its days are now over. counted, admitted the American agency, on May 17. Dust accumulates on its two solar panels, which only provide 1/10^e energy produced at the start of the mission. The latter has already been extended beyond the planned Martian year (the equivalent of two Earth years), and its main instrument, the French-designed SEIS seismometer, which worked wonders, will not be able to operate beyond the end of summer. From the end of May, the robotic arm will be placed in a “retirement position”. NASA engineers predict that, barring a gale from the whirlwinds that occasionally sweep across the desolate landscape of Elysium Planitia, InSight will cease all activity in December.

On this spectrogram, we can observe the peak represented by the largest Martian earthquake detected by NASA’s InSight lander on May 4, thanks to its French-designed SEIS seismometer.

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