Morning Tidings

Tag: Lander

  • NASA Bids Goodbye to InSight Mars Lander After Over Four Years of Unique Data Collection on Red Planet

    NASA Bids Goodbye to InSight Mars Lander After Over Four Years of Unique Data Collection on Red Planet

    Washington, December 22 : The US space agency has finally retired InSight Mars lander after more than four years of collecting unique science on the Red Planet. Mission controllers at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California were unable to contact the lander after two consecutive attempts, leading them to conclude the spacecraft’s solar-powered batteries have run out of energy referred to as “dead bus”.  NASA’s Mars InSight Lander Posts Its Last Image on Twitter As It Prepares To Fall Silent Anytime.

    The agency said in a statement that it will continue to listen for a signal from the lander, just in case, but hearing from it at this point is considered unlikely. The last time InSight communicated with Earth was on December 15.

    “I watched the launch and landing of this mission, and while saying goodbye to a spacecraft is always sad, the fascinating science InSight conducted is cause for celebration,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.

    “The seismic data alone from this Discovery Program mission offers tremendous insights not just into Mars but other rocky bodies, including Earth,” he added. NASA Sensors To Help Scientists Detect Methane Emitted by Landfills Across the Globe.

    InSight data has yielded details about Mars’ interior layers, the surprisingly strong remnants beneath the surface of its extinct magnetic dynamo, weather on this part of Mars, and lots of quake activity.

    Its highly sensitive seismometer, along with daily monitoring performed by the French space agency Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and the Marsquake Service managed by ETH Zurich, detected 1,319 “marsquakes”, including quakes caused by meteoroid impacts, the largest of which unearthed boulder-size chunks of ice late last year.

    Such impacts help scientists determine the age of the planet’s surface, and data from the seismometer provides scientists a way to study the planet’s crust, mantle and core.

    “With InSight, seismology was the focus of a mission beyond Earth for the first time since the Apollo missions, when astronauts brought seismometers to the Moon,” said Philippe Lognonne of Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, principal investigator of InSight’s seismometer.

    The seismometer was the last science instrument that remained powered on as dust accumulating on the lander’s solar panels gradually reduced its energy, a process that began before NASA extended the mission earlier this year.

    “As a scientist who’s spent a career studying Mars, it’s been a thrill to see what the lander has achieved, thanks to an entire team of people across the globe who helped make this mission a success,” said Laurie Leshin, director of JPL, which manages the mission.

    Mars InSight lander on Tuesday posted its last image on Twitter. “My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send. Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will – but I’ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me,” posted the InSight lander team.

    (The above story first appeared on Morning Tidings on Dec 22, 2022 11:12 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website morningtidings.com).

  • NASA’s Mars InSight Lander Posts Its Last Image on Twitter As It Prepares To Fall Silent Anytime

    NASA’s Mars InSight Lander Posts Its Last Image on Twitter As It Prepares To Fall Silent Anytime

    New Delhi, December 20 : NASA’s Mars InSight lander on Tuesday posted its last image on Twitter as it prepares to fall silent anytime, ending its history-making mission to reveal secrets of the Red Planet’s interior. The spacecraft’s power generation continues to decline as windblown dust on its solar panels thickens. The end is expected to come anytime. NASA Sensors To Help Scientists Detect Methane Emitted by Landfills Across the Globe.

    “My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send. Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will – but I’ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me,” posted the InSight lander team.

    The 30-member odd operations team – a small group compared to other Mars missions – continues to squeeze the most they can out of InSight (short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport). The most important of the final steps with the InSight mission is storing its trove of data and making it accessible to researchers around the world.

    The lander data has yielded details about Mars’ interior layers, its liquid core, the surprisingly variable remnants beneath the surface of its mostly extinct magnetic field, weather on this part of Mars, and lots of quake activity, according to NASA. Nine Jammu and Kashmir Students Participate in Global Asteroid Search Campaign as Part of NASA Project.

    InSight’s seismometer has detected more than 1,300 marsquakes since the lander touched down in November 2018, the largest measuring a magnitude 5. It even recorded quakes from meteoroid impacts.

    “Finally, we can see Mars as a planet with layers, with different thicknesses, compositions,” said Bruce Banerdt of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the mission’s principal investigator.

    “We’re starting to really tease out the details. Now it’s not just this enigma; it’s actually a living, breathing planet.” The seismometer readings will join the only other sets of extraterrestrial seismic data, from the Apollo lunar missions and the Viking Mars missions, in NASA’s Planetary Data System.

    They will also go into an international archive run by the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology, which houses “all the terrestrial seismic network data locations”, said JPL’s Sue Smrekar, InSight’s deputy principal investigator. “Now, we also have one on Mars.”

    Smrekar said the data is expected to continue yielding discoveries for decades. There will be no heroic measures to re-establish contact with InSight. While a mission-saving event – a strong gust of wind, say, that cleans the panels off – isn’t out of the question, it is considered unlikely.

    (The above story first appeared on Morning Tidings on Dec 20, 2022 08:06 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website morningtidings.com).

  • Video: SpaceX Launches Private Mission to Moon With Japanese Lander and United Arab Emirates Rover After Series of Delays

    Video: SpaceX Launches Private Mission to Moon With Japanese Lander and United Arab Emirates Rover After Series of Delays

    After series of delays, SpaceX has launched a private mission to the moon with a Japanese lander and United Arab Emirates rover. The SpaceX flight, which kicked off ispace’s Mission 1, was originally supposed to get off the ground last month. It has been pushed back several times, however, so SpaceX could perform additional checks on the Falcon 9.

    Watch Video:

    (SocialLY brings you all the latest breaking news, viral trends and information from social media world, including Twitter, Instagram and Youtube. The above post is embeded directly from the user’s social media account and Morning Tidings Staff may not have modified or edited the content body. The views and facts appearing in the social media post do not reflect the opinions of Morning Tidings, also Morning Tidings does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.)

  • One Last Selfie From NASA’s InSight Mars Lander Shared Before It Loses Power Due to Dust

    Washington, May 26: NASA has shared one last selfie taken by InSight Mars lander that is about to retire soon as it is losing power due to dusty solar panels.

    The final selfie was taken on April 24 and shows the lander completely covered in dust.

    “A dusty self-portrait,” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages InSight, said in a tweet.

    “@NASAInSight took what is likely to be its final selfie on April 24,” it added.

    The tweet also added a GIF, which showed the spacecraft’s first selfie taken in December 2018 and the latest “where it’s covered in Martian dust”.

    NASA had, last week, shared that InSight is gradually losing power and “is anticipated to end science operations later this summer”.

    “By December, InSight’s team expects the lander to have become inoperative, and concluding the mission,” NASA had shared in a statement.

    InSight (short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport), which landed on Mars November 26, 2018, was initially designed for nearly two Earth years. The mission was then extended, and its solar panels have been producing less power as they continue to accumulate dust. NASA’s Hubble Captures Picture of Big Star ‘Herschel 36’ That is 32 Times the Size of the Sun! (See Pic).

    The lander’s solar panels, each measuring about 2.2 metres wide, are producing roughly at about one-tenth of its landing capacity of 5,000 watt-hours, NASA had said.

    In addition, over the next few months, there will be more dust in the air, reducing sunlight — and the lander’s energy. Energy is being prioritised for the lander’s seismometer, which will operate at select times of day, such as at night, when winds are low and marsquakes are easier for the seismometer to “hear”.

    The seismometer itself is expected to be off by the end of summer, concluding the science phase of the mission.

    At that point, the lander will still have enough power to operate, taking the occasional picture and communicating with Earth. But the team expects that around December, “power will be low enough that one day InSight will simply stop responding”.

    With its final selfie, the mission team will soon put the lander’s robotic arm in its resting position (called the “retirement pose”) for the last time this month.

    (The above story first appeared on Morning Tidings on May 26, 2022 05:03 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website morningtidings.com).

  • Jeff Bezos Offers NASA Billion Discount For Human Lunar Lander Mission

    Jeff Bezos Offers NASA $2 Billion Discount For Human Lunar Lander Mission

    San Francisco, July 27: Fresh from his trip to the edge of space, Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos has offered NASA a discount of up to $2 billion to give his space company Blue Origin the human lunar landing system (HLS) contract, won by Elon Musks SpaceX earlier this year.

    Escalating his space war with Musk, Bezos in an open letter to the NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said on Monday that his company would close US space agency’s near-term budgetary shortfall and producing a safe and sustainable lander that will return Americans to the surface of the Moon � this time to stay.

    “I believe this mission is important. I am honoured to offer these contributions and am grateful to be in a financial position to be able to do so,” Bezos wrote.

    Amid protests from Bezos-owned Blue Origin, the US space agency in May suspended work on the $2.9 billion lunar lander contract given to Elon Musk-owned SpaceX.

    Blue Origin had filed a protest with the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) against NASA for awarding $2.9 billion contract to SpaceX for landing astronauts on the Moon by 2024.

    In the letter, Bezos said that “Blue Origin will bridge the HLS budgetary funding shortfall by waiving all payments in the current and next two government fiscal years up to $2B to get the programme back on track right now”.

    “This offer is not a deferral but is an outright and permanent waiver of those payments. This offer provides time for government appropriation actions to catch up. Blue Origin will, at its own cost, contribute the development and launch of a pathfinder mission to low-Earth orbit of the lunar descent element to further retire development and schedule risks,” Bezos added.

    Blue Origin will accept a firm, fixed-priced contract for this work, cover any system development cost overruns, and shield NASA from partner cost escalation concerns.

    The US space agency was expected to pick two lunar lander prototypes (including one of Blue Origin’s) but funding cut from US Congress led the agency to select SpaceX over Blue Origin.

    The third company in the race, Dynetics, also protested NASA’s decision to the GAO, which adjudicates bidding disputes.

    In a 175-page protest, Blue Origin had accused NASA of misjudging several parts of its proposal for its lunar lander called Blue Moon.

    Musk responded to Blue Origin’s protest with a tweet: “Can’t get it up (to orbit) lol”.

    The contract is part of NASA’s Artemis programme, which aims to return astronauts to the moon by 2024 as a stepping stone to the first human mission to Mars.

    (The above story first appeared on Morning Tidings on Jul 27, 2021 12:24 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website morningtidings.com).