'Don't Worry About Me': NASA's InSight Shares One Last Image of Mars Before Going to Sleep Forever
NASA InSight lander has entered its final days on Mars after studying the planet's interior and measuring the seismic activities since its launch.
The robot, which landed on Mars on November 26, 2018, sent the probable ‘last image’ of Mars as its power dwindled due to the red planet’s relentless dust that choked it out. In November, the space agency warned about the lander’s ending time on Mars as dust thickened the InSight’s power. "The spacecraft's power generation continues to decline as windblown dust on its solar panels thickens," wrote NASA on November 2. Just after a month of NASA’s warning, InSight sent a message that read, “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. Thanks for staying with me.” According to the reports, NASA will officially end the mission if the lander misses two communication attempts in a row along with a spacecraft orbiting the planet.
InSight’s operation team, which predicted its final days on Mars, started preparing for the robotic geologist to ‘sleep forever’ earlier this year. They shut down devices that required the most power and ensured that the data it has collected over the past four years is preserved. The Internet Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Head Transport (InSight) was a mission with a robotic lander designed to study the deep interior of the planet Mars.
The lander successfully touched down at Elysium Planitia in 2018. Since then, it has provided insight into the red planet’s liquid core and the compositions of its inner layers. It even detected more than 1300 quakes including the one with a magnitude of 5 in May. As per sources, the lander’s core mission was achieved in the first two years of its launch.