NASA is preparing to say goodbye to the InSight spacecraft – NASA’s InSight Mars Lander

Comparison of InSight selfies

Using the camera on its robotic arm, NASA’s InSight lander captured these selfies on December 6, 2018 – just 10 days after landing on Mars – and April 24, 2022. A thick layer of dust can be seen on the lander and its solar panels in the last image. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Download image >

A closer look at what’s involved in completing the mission as the spacecraft’s power continues to dwindle.

The day is fast approaching when NASA’s Mars InSight lander will fall silent and complete its historic mission to unveil the mysteries of the Red Planet’s interior. The spacecraft’s power generation continues to decrease as windblown dust thickens on its solar panels. Therefore, the team has taken steps to continue using the remaining energy for as long as possible. The end should come in the next few weeks.

But even as the close-knit 25- to 30-strong operations team — a small group compared to other Mars missions — continue to get the most out of InSight (short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport), they’re getting the most out of them I have also started taking steps to complete the mission.

Here’s a look at what that looks like.

preserve data

The most important of the final steps in the InSight mission is to store their data treasure and make it accessible to researchers around the world. The lander data has provided details about Mars’ inner layers, its liquid core, the surprisingly variable remnants beneath the surface of its largely defunct magnetic field, the weather on that part of Mars, and much tremor activity.

InSight’s seismometer, provided by France’s Center National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), has registered more than 1,300 marsquakes since the lander landed in November 2018, the largest being a magnitude 5. It even recorded tremors caused by meteorite impacts . Observing how the seismic waves from these tremors change as they travel through the planet provides an invaluable insight into the interior of Mars, but also provides a better understanding of how all rocky worlds, including Earth and its moon, form .

“Finally, we can see Mars as a planet with layers of varying thickness and composition,” said Bruce Banerdt of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the mission’s principal investigator. “We’re starting to really tease out the details. Now it’s not just this mystery; it is indeed a living, breathing planet.”

The seismometer readings will join the only other set of extraterrestrial seismic data from the Apollo moon missions in NASA’s Planetary Data System. They will also be included in an international archive operated by the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology, which houses “all data locations of the terrestrial seismic network,” said Sue Smrekar of JPL, InSight’s deputy principal investigator. “Now we have one on Mars too.”

Smrekar said the data is expected to continue to provide discoveries for decades to come.

manage power

By early summer, the lander had so little remaining power that the mission shut down all other InSight science instruments to keep the seismometer running. They even turned off the fault protection system that would otherwise automatically shut down the seismometer if the system determined that the lander’s power generation is dangerously low.

“We were down to less than 20% of original generation capacity,” Banerdt said. “That means we can’t afford to keep the instruments running 24/7.”

After a regional dust storm intensified the lander’s dust-covered solar panels, the team recently decided to shut down the seismometer entirely to conserve power. Now that the storm has passed, the seismometer is collecting data again — although the mission expects the lander to only have enough power for a couple of weeks.

Of the seismometer’s sensors, only the most sensitive ones were still operational, said Liz Barrett, who leads science and instrument operations for the team at JPL, adding, “We’re pushing it to the end.”

pack up twin

A silent member of the team is ForeSight, the full-size engineering model of InSight at JPL’s In-Situ Instrument Laboratory. Engineers used ForeSight to practice how InSight would use the lander’s robotic arm to place scientific instruments on the Martian surface, to test techniques for getting the lander’s thermal probe into the sticky Martian soil, and to develop ways to detect sounds picked up by the seismometer to reduce.

ForeSight is boxed and stored. “We will pack it lovingly,” said Banerdt. “It’s been a great tool, a great companion for us throughout this mission.”

declare end of mission

NASA will declare the mission over if InSight misses two consecutive communication sessions with the spacecraft, which orbits Mars and is part of the Mars Relay Network — but only if the cause of the missed communication is the lander itself, network manager Roy Gladden said from JPL. After that, NASA’s Deep Space Network will be listening for a while, just in case.

There will be no heroic measures to restore contact with InSight. While a mission-saving event – such as a strong gust of wind cleaning the panels – cannot be ruled out, it is considered unlikely.

In the meantime, as long as InSight stays in touch, the team will continue to collect data. “We will carry out scientific measurements for as long as possible,” said Banerdt. “We are at the mercy of Mars. Weather on Mars is not rain and snow; Weather on Mars is dust and wind.”

More about the mission

JPL manages InSight for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA’s Discovery program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space of Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and is supporting operations of the spacecraft for the mission.

A number of European partners, including France’s Center National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at the IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions to SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the UK; 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) provided the temperature and wind sensors, and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) provided a passive laser retroreflector.

News media contacts

Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
818-393-2433
[email protected]

Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
301-286-6284 / 202-358-1501
[email protected] / [email protected]

Written by Pat Brennan