Skip to main content

Mars InSight Has One Last Job: Getting Swallowed by Dust on the Red Planet

Normally you don’t want dust to get into your spacecraft. That was certainly true for the InSight mission to Mars, until it died. Now, however, it’s acting as a dust collector, and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) scientists couldn’t be happier.

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) onboard MRO monitors and images the surface. In particular, it has been imaging landing sites on Mars to track dust accumulation on the surface. The idea is to see how quickly the landers and their nearby environments get covered. It doesn’t just focus on landing sites, though. It also checks places like impact craters to track surface changes in and around those regions. As you can see from its latest image above, taken on April 1st, 2024, it’s getting tough to spot the InSIGHT lander thanks to ever-growing accumulations of dust.

Monitoring Surface Changes on Mars

HiRISE has been checking in on the InSIGHT lander ever since it first deployed on Mars. Early images show the hardware in fairly good detail right after landing. Then, over time, as Martian winds take their toll, it’s obvious the spacecraft is getting coated in dust. That’s also true of other spacecraft that HiRISE images from time to time.

The best image of the InSight lander taken by HiRISE in 2019. HiRISE scientists were looking for dust devil tracks and other changes in the surface due to dust. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona
The best image of the InSight lander taken by HiRISE in 2019. HiRISE scientists were looking for dust devil tracks and other changes in the surface due to dust. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona

Why care about dust? Although we know a great deal about Mars, there’s still a lot to figure out. Wind deposition of dust is part of the so-called aeolian processes that alter the Martian surface appearance. They’re named after the Greek wind god Aeolus. Dust storms are certainly visible on Mars from Earth, but we can’t really “see” their deposits easily without getting close to (or on) the planet. Other activities, such as dust devils, also redistribute dust around the planet. All this activity creates wind streaks, sand, and dust deposits, and covers up spacecraft on the surface.

The study of the aeolian process is one of the HiRISE instrument’s major science themes. There’s not much water action to change the surface. Nor is there any Martian volcanic activity to muck up the landscape. Impact craters do tear up the surface, but they aren’t frequent. That leaves aeolian activity as a major player in Mars surface changes. Image after image shows dunes, ripples, wind streaks, dust devil tracks, and other features created by the winds. The HiRISE imaging project gives a “wide-angle” view of aeolian effects on the Red Planet and how its various surface units change over time.

InSight’s Future on Mars

The InSight lander performed almost flawlessly during its four years in operation on Mars. Although one of its instruments, the “mole” had some difficulties performing its digging action, the mission as a whole was quite successful. The seismograph monitored Marsquakes throughout the mission, which gives details about the Martian interior. It also differentiated between quakes from Mars’s interior and those caused by impacts. The spacecraft other instruments sampled the remnants of the weak magnetic field and monitored the Martian weather.

The InSight lander not only measured seismic motions on Mars, but also sampled the atmosphere and listened to its winds. Courtesy: NASA/JPL.

As increasing levels of dust covered InSight’s solar panels, mission scientists had to power down many of its systems. The seismometer was the last one to be shut off. The spacecraft was officially considered “dead” after mission controllers didn’t hear from it after two attempts at communication. The last time anybody heard from it was December 15, 2022.

These days, although the instruments are silent and the solar panels are dead, the spacecraft is passively and rapidly accumulating dust. That gives scientists a chance to understand just how the surface changes thanks to aeolian activity.

For More Information

Revisiting InSight
Aeolian Themes for HiRISE
Winds of Mars
InSight Mission Ends

The post Mars InSight Has One Last Job: Getting Swallowed by Dust on the Red Planet appeared first on Universe Today.



from Universe Today https://ift.tt/4DxfM3s
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

More Data and Machine Learning has Kicked SETI Into High Gear

For over sixty years, astronomers and astrophysicists have been engaged in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). This consists of listening to other star systems for signs of technological activity (or “technosignatures), such as radio transmissions. This first attempt was in 1960, known as Project Ozma, where famed SETI researcher Dr. Frank Drake (father of the Drake Equation) and his colleagues used the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia to conduct a radio survey of Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani. Since then, the vast majority of SETI surveys have similarly looked for narrowband radio signals since they are very good at propagating through interstellar space. However, the biggest challenge has always been how to filter out radio transmissions on Earth – aka. radio frequency interference (RFI). In a recent study, an international team led by the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (DIAA) applied a new deep-learning algorithm to data collecte...
Post a Comment
Read more

The First Close-Up Picture of Star Outside the Milky Way

Like a performer preparing for their big finale, a distant star is shedding its outer layers and preparing to explode as a supernova. Astronomers have been observing the huge star, named WOH G64, since its discovery in the 1970s. It’s one of the largest known stars, and also one of the most luminous and massive red supergiants (RSGs). The star is surrounded by an envelope of expelled star-stuff, which could indicate it’s getting ready to explode. WOH G64 isn’t in the Milky Way; it’s in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), the Milky Way’s largest satellite galaxy. Getting these detailed image is quite a feat for the ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer. It’s also quite an accomplishment for the team of scientists behind the image. They’ve published their images and the results of their observations of the star in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. Their research is titled “ Imaging the innermost circumstellar environment of the red supergiant WOH G64 in the Large Magellanic ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Planetary Surfaces: Why study them? Can they help us find life elsewhere?

Universe Today recently explored the importance of studying impact craters and what they can teach us about finding life beyond Earth. Impact craters are considered one of the many surface processes—others include volcanism, weathering, erosion, and plate tectonics—that shape surfaces on numerous planetary bodies, with all of them simultaneously occurring on Earth. Here, we will explore how and why planetary scientists study planetary surfaces, the challenges faced when studying other planetary surfaces, what planetary surfaces can teach us about finding life, and how upcoming students can pursue studying planetary surfaces, as well. So, why is it so important to study planetary surfaces throughout the solar system? “Planetary surfaces record the history of the Solar System, a history that’s almost entirely lost to us here on Earth,” Dr. Paul Byrne, who is an Associate Professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, tells  Uni...
Post a Comment
Read more