[▲ Image taken by NASA’s Mars rover “Insight” on December 11, 2022 (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)]
This is an image taken on December 11, 2022 by NASA’s Mars rover InSight.
The dome-shaped device placed on the ground is the Mars seismometer “ SEIS (Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure) ” installed in December 2018 four years ago. The SEIS, illuminated by the evening sun, and the cables leading to the InSight main body in the foreground are covered in dust, giving the impression that they are assimilating with the reddish-brown land of Mars.
NASA has released the images sent from Insight one by one, but mission 1436 Sol（※）No new images have been received from InSight since this image was taken on 2022 December 20, 2022 (JST). On December 19, NASA announced that it had attempted to communicate with InSight on December 18, but received no response. The last time I was able to communicate with Insight was on December 15th, and I will continue to try to communicate.
* 1 Sol = 1 solar day on Mars, approximately 24 hours and 40 minutes.
Since landing on Mars’ Elysium Planitia on November 27, 2018, InSight’s power output has been declining due to a gradual accumulation of dust on its solar arrays, and the mission will be delayed until 2023 due to power shortages. It was expected to be finished by the end of the month. On December 20th, NASA posted the first image on the Insight Mission’s official Twitter account, stating that this may be the last image they were able to send.
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. pic.twitter.com/wkYKww15kQ
— NASA InSight (@NASAInSight) December 19, 2022
[▲Tweet of the Insight Mission official account that shared the opening image]
association:NASA’s Mars probe InSight suspends observation of seismic waves, power drops due to dust storm(October 14, 2022)
InSight is a spacecraft developed for the purpose of clarifying the internal structure of Mars. SEIS, which was installed the month after landing, succeeded in detecting Martian earthquakes (firequakes) for the first time in history. Analysis of more than 1,300 seismic waves detected by SEIS to date has revealed that the core of Mars is liquid, the size of the core, and the thickness of the crust.
The InSight mission was scheduled to last two years after landing (about one year on Mars), but has been extended by two years until December 2022. On May 4, 2022, the largest Mars observation ever made A magnitude (M) 4.7 earthquake was detected (named S1222a in the catalogue, previously announced by NASA as an M5 earthquake). The largest quake InSight had detected so far was magnitude 4.2, but the magnitude 4.7 quake released more than five times that amount of energy.
On December 14, a paper by a research team headed by Taichi Kawamura of the Paris Geophysical Institute, which analyzed this earthquake, was published in Geophysical Research Letters, an academic journal of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). rice field. Many of the quakes InSight detected had their epicenters in the Cerberus Fossae, about 1,600 kilometers east of the landing site, but the magnitude 4.7 quake appears to have occurred just outside the Cerberus rift. , which may be related to mechanisms hidden beneath the crust. Mr. Kawamura commented on Insight’s mission, ‘I think it was an extraordinary success.’
【▲ “The last selfie” taken by NASA’s Mars rover “Insight”. Taken on April 24, 2022 (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)】
Source
- Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
- NASA – NASA InSight – Dec. 19, 2022
- AGU – The biggest Marsquake was 5 times larger than previous record holder
- Kawamura et al. – S1222a – the largest Marsquake detected by InSight (Geophysical Research Letters)
Text / Takehiro Matsumura