NASA's InSight makes its best effort to keep the seismograph running
(Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
The engineers in charge of the InSight lander have decided to extend the life of the SEIS seismograph until the end of August or early September of this year.
However, in order to do this, the team will turn off the probe’s failure protection system. This measure will save electricity, it can fail without the possibility of repair.
The InSight lander has been operating on Mars for more than three and a half years, although it was originally estimated to work for just over a year.
The device is engaged in geophysical research of the Red Planet and has registered more than 1300 marsquakes to date.
The lander receives electricity with the help of two large solar panels, on which dust constantly accumulates.
The team hoped that dust devils would be able to clean them, but this did not happen; they also tried to manually remove the dust but they couldn’t.
As a result, the electric power generated by the batteries fell 10 times, which initially led to a reduction in the possible life of the probe until the end of this year.
Then the space agency decided to end the science program by the fall, as the level of available power is also falling due to the Martian winter.
Right now, all InSight's scientific instruments (,except for the SEIS seismograph) have already been turned off. Even the robotic arm has been put into rest mode.
Initially, Insight’s team planned to turn off SEIS at the end of June, but now the team has decided to take a risky step.
They want to obtain the largest possible amount of scientific data on the seismic activity of Mars.
The seismograph will now operate until the end of August (or early September), and in order to have enough power, the station team will turn off the fail-safe system.
This measure automatically puts the lander into a safe mode in case of failures or adverse weather conditions.
If there will be an accident, the InSight team will not have time to respond and the lander can fail at any time. Alea iacta est
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