MRO observes dormant InSight lander; collects data on Martian dust movements

on

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) recently imaged NASA’s Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport (InSight) lander, which has been dormant on the Martian surface for two years. The new imagery highlights movements in Martian surface dust around InSight, providing planetary scientists with more information on Mars’s climate and atmospheric qualities.

On Nov. 26, 2018, InSight landed on Mars in the Elysium Planitia region after a seven-month journey through the solar system. Upon landing, its mission began, with the lander’s main goals being to measure Martian seismic activity, provide accurate models of Mars’ internal heat transfer, and accurately model the interior of Mars. After four years of measurements and ground-breaking discoveries, InSight had accumulated too much dust on its solar panels, resulting in low power levels and, ultimately, the end of the mission.

Given the stationary nature of InSight’s design, the blowing winds of Mars’s atmosphere often resulted in small dust storms that coated InSight and its surrounding area. During its mission, InSight’s cameras and MRO’s HiRISE camera, which captured the recent imagery of the dormant lander, were used by InSight’s team on Earth to estimate the amount of dust on the lander’s solar panels.

With InSight’s mission now over, teams can’t use the lander’s cameras to estimate the dust on its solar panels. However, MRO is still operational in Martian orbit and has continued to image the lander so that scientists can estimate the amount of dust on it and understand the movement of dust around it.

“Even though we’re no longer hearing from InSight, it’s still teaching us about Mars. By monitoring how much dust collects on the surface — and how much gets vacuumed away by wind and dust devils — we learn more about the wind, dust cycle, and other processes that shape the planet,” said InSight team member Ingrid Daubar of Brown University in Rhode Island.

Dust devils are quite common on Mars and have been known to sweep over landers and rovers, often blowing away the dust that coats their hulls and solar panels. Planetary scientists have been studying the whirlwinds for decades to better understand Mars’s atmosphere and prepare engineers and scientists for future missions to the Red Planet, given that Martian dust can find its way into sensitive mechanical parts on spacecraft.

MRO’s imagery of InSight shows many dust devil tracks in its immediate vicinity. When InSight was still active, scientists would identify dust devil tracks in MRO imagery and search for the whirlwinds in InSight’s camera data. Their observations revealed that dust devils are most common during the Martian summer but almost completely disappear in the winter.

MRO’s continued imagery of InSight has also allowed planetary scientists to understand meteoroid impacts on Mars. MRO imagery has revealed that regions with more craters are the oldest Martian regions. However, this same principle can’t be applied to planets like Earth, as Earth’s constantly shifting and changing tectonic plates lead to the planet’s surface being recycled, erasing the craters.

MRO’s view of InSight just weeks after its landing on Mars. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)

Interestingly, Mars’s craters will sometimes “disappear” as dust accumulates within and around their rims. Understanding the speed at which dust makes craters disappear allows scientists to determine the age of a crater or when meteoroid impacts occurred within a region.

Scientists have also used the small craters created by InSight’s landing retrorocket thrusters to study crater disappearance on Mars. Following landing, the craters were dark brown but have since returned to the surrounding terrain’s red-brown rust color as dust moved underneath the lander.

“It feels a little bittersweet to look at InSight now. It was a successful mission that produced lots of great science. Of course, it would have been nice if it kept going forever, but we knew that wouldn’t happen,” Daubar said.

As mentioned, dust devils will often sweep over spacecraft and clean their surfaces of the Martian dust that coats them. As such, engineers have continued to listen for radio signals from InSight in the rare case that a dust devil cleans the lander’s solar panels, allowing its batteries to recharge.

InSight during its mission as seen by MRO. Note the “disappearance” of the lander’s landing crater. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)

Unfortunately, no new signals have been detected from the lander in the two years following its mission, and NASA recently announced that teams will stop listening for new signals from InSight at the end of 2024. InSight’s team requested the recent MRO HiRISE imagery as a final farewell to the lander, which will stand on Mars’s surface as a monument to Martian geology for decades to come.

(Lead image: NASA’s retired InSight lander as seen on Mars by MRO’s HiRISE camera. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)

The post MRO observes dormant InSight lander; collects data on Martian dust movements appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com.



Comments

Post a Comment