11:47 p.m
Sunday 30 October 2022
After 4 years spent in revealing the secrets and unknowns of the Malakh, the US space agency (NASA) announced the imminent death of the InSight spacecraft, which has been on the surface of the Red Planet since 2018.
NASA indicated that the InSight spacecraft will run out of power and stop working in a period of 4 to 8 weeks.
Bruce Banerdt, a planetary physicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the principal investigator for the Insight mission, told a reporter that dust is accumulating on the solar panels that bring power to the spacecraft and that the situation is exacerbated by a dust storm, which is depleting its batteries.
When the power runs out, Bannerdt said, NASA will lose contact with the spacecraft. “Insight has achieved a success beyond my expectations,” he told Reuters.
He continued, “We have determined the thickness of the crust, the size and density of the inner core, and the details of the structure of the outer surface. For the first time, we have a comprehensive, detailed map of the deep interior of a planet other than Earth and the Moon.”