Going out with a bang, NASA's InSight Mars lander, slowly dying as light-blocking dust builds up on its solar arrays, detected the most powerful marsquake yet recorded May 4, a magnitude 5 temblor 10 times stronger than the previous record holder.
Going out with a bang, NASA's InSight Mars lander, slowly dying as light-blocking dust builds up on its solar arrays, detected the most powerful marsquake yet recorded May 4, a magnitude 5 temblor 10 times stronger than the previous record holder.landed on the red planet in 2018
Two images of NASA's InSight Mars landing show before and after views of the spacecraft's solar arrays. On the left, the circular arrays are seen just after landing, before any martian dust had a chance to collect on them. In the three-and-a-half years since landing, the arrays have been covered with dust, reducing power output by 90 percent. / Credit: NASAthe spacecraft has detected since landing.
"InSight has transformed our understanding of the interiors of rocky planets and set the stage for future missions," Lori Glaze, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, said in a statement. "We can apply what we've learned about Mars' inner structure to Earth, the moon, Venus and even rocky planets in other solar systems."InSight was launched May 5, 2018, and plunged to a successful landing in a region of Mars known as Elysium Planitia on Nov.
The seismometer, sensitive enough to measure vibrations as small as the width of an atom, has worked flawlessly throughout the mission.But the end is now in sight, so to speak.
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