After more than four years on Mars, the US space agency Nasa has the probe Insight shut down. A team from the control center in California was unable to contact her on two consecutive attempts, announced the US space agency. This suggested that the module’s solar-powered batteries could no longer provide enough power, it said. The reason for this is the dust from the Red Planet, which is becoming thicker and thicker on the solar modules.
NASA announced in November that Insight will only have energy for a few weeks; on Tuesday it was said that the lander had probably transmitted its last picture of Mars.
The last Insight image, transmitted on Tuesday, shows the area in front of the lander.
(Photo: -/dpa)
The stationary lander arrived on Mars in November 2018 to measure seismic activity. He achieved his scientific goals after just over two years, leaving him on an “extended mission”. Insight According to Nasa, more than 1,300 marsquakes have been registered, giving scientists information about the inner structure of the planet. The main task now is to secure the amount of data and make it accessible to researchers all over the world.
The German Aerospace Center (DLR) was also involved in the landing mission with measuring instruments and a scientific team. Insight was, according to DLR, the first purely geophysical Mars mission. The last radio contact with the earth took place on December 15th. The so-called Mars mole, which was developed in Germany and flew to Mars with the NASA probe in 2018, became known during the mission. The self-hammering device, which was developed for loose, sandy Martian soil, had long had difficulties on the unexpectedly hard soil at its site. “The instrument was finally able to bury its 40-centimetre probe just below the surface and collect valuable data on the mechanical and thermal properties of the Martian soil in the process,” writes DLR. A depth of five meters was originally planned.