The machine will soon no longer be able to benefit from the energy necessary for its maintenance alive, due to the dust of its solar panels, announced NASA on May 17.
Le Monde Science and Medicine
On May 4, Insight, the NASA Martian landing, recorded an earthquake of magnitude 5, the strongest of some 1,300 jerks captured by his instruments since his arrival on the Red Planet in November 2018. But his days are now counted, admitted the American agency on May 17. The dust accumulates on its two solar panels, which only provide 1/10
é> of the energy produced at the start of the mission. The latter has already been extended beyond the planned Martian year (the equivalent of two earthly years), and its main instrument, the seismometer SEIS, of French design, which has done wonder, will not work beyond the end of summer. At the end of May, the robotic arm will be placed in “retirement position”. NASA engineers provide that, except providential gale given by the vortices that sometimes sweep the desolate landscape of Elysium Planitia, Insight will cease all activity in December.
