- 3639 - INSIGHT - rover on Mars? Despite its draining 2022 power, NASA’s “InSight” Mars lander is determined to squeeze as much science as it can until the very last moment. Its solar panels are caked with dust and the batteries are running out of juice, but InSight Mars lander continues to soldier forth collecting more science about the Red Planet until its very last beep.
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--------------------- 3639 - INSIGHT - rover on Mars?
- To conserve energy, InSight was projected to shut down its seismometer, its last operational science instrument, by the end of June, hoping to survive on its remaining power until December.
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- The seismometer has been the key instrument designed to measure marsquakes, which it has been recording since it touched down on Mars in 2018, and recently recorded a
5.0-magnitude quake, the biggest yet.
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- InSight Mars lander took its final selfie on April 24, 2022, the 1,211th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.
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- Instead of shutting down this key instrument, the team now plans to program the lander so that the seismometer can operate longer, perhaps until the end of August or into early September. Doing so will discharge the lander’s batteries sooner and cause the spacecraft to run out of power at that time as well, but it might enable the seismometer to detect additional marsquakes.
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- Launched from Vandenburg AFB on May 5, 2018, NASA’s InSight lander touched down on Mars on November 26, 2018. Its science goals included studying how rocky planets both formed and evolved as well as to figure out how tectonically active Mars is today.
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- InSight successfully detected the first quake on another planet; gathered new information about Mars’ three major layers, crust, mantle, and core; detected traces of an ancient magnetic field “frozen” in the crustal rocks; and studied dust devils and other atmosphere and weather data.
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- Unfortunately, Mars is a dusty place, and this proved to be a problem for the lander. Since InSight is solar-powered, any obstruction of the solar panels undoubtedly reduces the sunlight it receives to keep going. While past rover such as Opportunity were blessed with dust devils cleaning their own solar panels, allowing it to stay powered for years past its initially planned 90-day mission, InSight was not granted this same gift.
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- Now the lander is covered with far more dust than it was in its first selfie, taken in December 2018, not long after landing. It displays the lander’s solar panels and deck. On top of the deck are its science instruments, weather sensor booms and UHF antenna.
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- All instruments but the seismometer have already been powered down. Like other Mars spacecraft, InSight has a fault protection system that automatically triggers “safe mode” in threatening situations and shuts down all but its most essential functions, allowing engineers to assess the situation. Low power and temperatures that drift outside predetermined limits can both trigger safe mode.
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- To enable the seismometer to continue to run for as long as possible, the mission team is turning off InSight’s fault protection system. While this will enable the instrument to operate longer, it leaves the lander unprotected from sudden, unexpected events that ground controllers wouldn’t have time to respond to.
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- NASA is currently working on bringing Mars samples back to Earth sometime in the 2030s. This sample return mission is the next step after NASA’s Perseverance Rover successfully collected several cored samples from the Martian surface and left them directly on the surface where they will hopefully be picked up and returned to Earth in the coming years.
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- “Curiosity” is a rover that found Life-Crucial Carbon in Mars rocks. Carbon-based are the basis for the chemical compounds that forms our life. It’s crucial because it bonds with other elements such as hydrogen and oxygen to create the complex molecules that are part of life. So, when we look for evidence of life elsewhere in the solar system, we look for carbon. That includes Mars.
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- A few years ago, the Mars Curiosity rover measured the abundance of total organic carbon in rock samples it took in Gale Crater. The amounts it found are higher than in rocks from some of the driest areas on Earth. The question now is whether Curiosity’s measurement indicates the presence of life-creating compounds. Or, could the carbon have come from other non-organic sources?
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- The Mars Curiosity Rover’s mission is to find evidence of life and habitability on Mars. It does that by studying the chemical and geological environment on the surface. In particular, it helps unveil what role water has played in the past. Its measurement of total organic carbon is part of that mission.
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- Knowing the carbon species on Mars helps scientists understand how they may have formed. Total organic carbon is special because it’s a crucial part of life’s recipe. Scientists studied Mars rocks dug up in 2014 to see if they could figure out what the abundance of this element means for the existence of life on ancient Mars.
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- Data provided by the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument onboard Curiosity is used to characterize carbon species on Mars. They found at least 200 to 273 parts per million of organic carbon. This is comparable to or even more than the amount found in rocks in very low-life places on Earth, such as parts of the Atacama Desert in South America, and more than has been detected in Mars meteorites.
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- To make its measurement, Curiosity delivered powdered rock to its Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument for further study. An onboard oven heated the sample to progressively higher temperatures. The experiment used oxygen and heat to convert the element to carbon dioxide (CO2).
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- The discovery of organic carbon on Mars is not new, but prior findings had limitations. To find it in Gale Crater, Curiosity took a soil sample of an area of its 3.5-billion-year-old mudstone rocks. Mudstone, as you might suspect, begins as mud at the bottom of a lake or ocean. The place where Curiosity sampled is the Yellowknife Bay formation in Gale Crater. It contained a lake several billion years ago. Organic carbon was part of the material that settled down to the lake bottom to make the mudstone.
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- Beyond simply finding the high abundances of organic carbon in Mars rocks, the experiment also allowed SAM to measure its isotope ratios. These are chemical analyses that help pinpoint the source of the element.
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- Isotopes are versions of an element with slightly different weights due to the presence of one or more extra neutrons in the center (nucleus) of their atoms. Carbon-12 has six neutrons while the heavier carbon-13 has seven neutrons. Since heavier isotopes react more slowly than lighter isotopes, the carbon from life is richer in carbon-12.
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- The presence of organic carbon is not necessarily definitive proof of life. However, it does provide other tantalizing information. The isotopic composition can really only tell us what portion of the total carbon is organic carbon and what portion is mineral carbon.
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- While biology cannot be completely ruled out, isotopes cannot really be used to support a biological origin for this carbon, either, because the range overlaps with igneous volcanic carbon and meteoritic organic material, which are most likely to be the source of this organic carbon.
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- So, even though the total organic carbon measured does not definitively prove life existed on Mars, it’s one more clue to the vanished ancient Martian environment. Gale Crater had chemical energy sources which feed many microbial life forms and low acidity.
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- Other elements essential for biology, such as oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur existed there. Basically, this location would have offered a habitable environment for life, if it ever was present.
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July 31, 2022 INSIGHT - rover on Mars? 3639
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