-
#280 by libra on 08 Oct, 2022 10:48
-
"That long black cloud is comin' down...
'I feel like I'm knockin' on heaven's door. -
#281 by Rondaz on 11 Oct, 2022 00:51
-
NASA InSight’s Power Level as of Oct. 8, 2022
Naomi Hartono Posted on October 10, 2022
On October 8, 2022, InSight was generating an average of 300 watt-hours of energy per Martian day, or sol – an increase after a sharp decline last week from 430 watt-hours per sol to a low of 275 watt-hours per sol. The decline was caused by a regional dust storm which, though thousands of miles from InSight’s location, is lofting dust into the atmosphere around it. The storm has started to wane, but dust particles will continue falling out of the atmosphere for weeks. InSight has minimized lander operations in order to keep its batteries from losing their charge while the solar arrays are getting less sunlight.
https://blogs.nasa.gov/insight/2022/10/10/nasa-insights-power-level-as-of-oct-8-2022/ -
#282 by Rondaz on 11 Oct, 2022 09:35
-
InSight station seismograph suspended due to dust storm on Mars
10.10.22
The team of the InSight automated Martian station turned off the SEIS seismograph for two weeks due to the onset of a powerful dust storm, which sharply reduced the level of power generation by the solar panels of the device. If the station survives the storm, observations will resume, according to the NASA website.
InSight has been engaged in geophysical research of the Red Planet for almost four years (initially, the life of the station was estimated at a maximum of two years), having received during this time a large amount of data on its internal structure and climate, as well as seismic activity. The station is currently preparing for shutdown due to unresolved problems with cleaning the solar panels from dust, which led to the shutdown of all scientific instruments except for cameras and the SEIS seismograph, for which the station turned off the fail-safe system.
Previously, scientists concluded that the station may not work until autumn, but until December or even January next year due to an unusually calm start to the dust storm season. However, on September 21, 2022, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter detected the beginning of a powerful and large dust storm 3500 kilometers from InSight, and by October 3, the storm was kicking so much dust into the atmosphere that the haze density increased by almost 40 percent. This led to a drop in solar power generation from 425 to 275 watt-hours per sol.
Fearing an even greater increase in atmospheric dustiness, the scientists decided to resort to an even greater energy saving mode and turn off the seismograph for two weeks - at the current rate of battery discharge, the station will be able to work for several more weeks. Data from orbital probes indicate that the growth of the storm has slowed down, and it may have already passed the peak of its activity and began to fade, so the station has a chance to survive the storm and resume scientific work.
You can learn about how the station explores Mars from the materials “Look inside the Red Planet” and “45 centimeters in 50 years” .
Alexander Voytyuk
https://nplus1.dev/news/2022/10/10/insight-forever -
#283 by redliox on 11 Oct, 2022 23:28
-
I fear this could be InSight's end, but the right wind gust could give a breath of life. Fearing for the worst but hoping for the best.
-
#284 by Rondaz on 21 Oct, 2022 01:48
-
NASA InSight’s Power Level as of Oct. 19, 2022
Naomi Hartono Posted on October 20, 2022
On October 19, 2022, InSight was generating an average between 275 and 285 watt-hours of energy per Martian day, or sol. The tau, or level of dust cover in the atmosphere, was estimated at 1.5 (typical tau levels outside of dust season range from 0.6-0.7).
https://blogs.nasa.gov/insight/2022/10/20/nasa-insights-power-level-as-of-oct-19-2022/ -
#285 by jacqmans on 22 Oct, 2022 07:43
-
October 21, 2022
MEDIA ADVISORY M22-157
NASA to Host Briefing on InSight, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Findings
NASA will host a virtual media briefing at 2 p.m. EDT on Thursday, Oct. 27, to share new scientific findings based on observations from the agency’s InSight Mars lander and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
Science team members from both missions will explain how data and images from each spacecraft – one on the Red Planet’s surface and one orbiting above – contributed to the discovery. They will share how the two missions worked together to confirm their observations. There will also be an update on InSight’s solar energy status.
The virtual briefing will livestream on NASA Television, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, as well as the agency’s app. Watch live on the agency’s website at:
https://www.nasa.gov/live
Participants will include:
Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters
Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal investigator, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California
Liliya Posiolova, MRO, orbital science operations lead at Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, California
Ingrid Daubar, InSight impact science lead, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island
To ask questions by phone, members of the media should email Rexana Vizza at [email protected] no later than two hours prior to the start of the event. Media and the public can submit questions on social media during the briefing using #AskNASA.
InSight landed on Mars in November 2018 to study the planet’s deep interior. After nearly four years, InSight has detected over 1,300 marsquakes, which can reveal details about the planet’s crust, mantle, and core. Well into an extended mission, the lander is steadily losing power as dust accumulates on its solar panels, and the mission is expected to end in the coming months.
MRO has studied the Red Planet’s atmosphere, surface, and subsurface from orbit since 2006. The spacecraft’s cameras, spectrometers, and radar have revealed active changes on the surface of Mars, locations of ancient liquid water, and previously unknown subsurface ice.
For more information about InSight, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/insight -
#286 by Rondaz on 25 Oct, 2022 21:39
-
NASA InSight’s Power Level as of Oct. 22, 2022
Naomi Hartono Posted on October 25, 2022
As of October 22, 2022, InSight’s seismometer is collecting data again after being switched off to conserve energy after a recent dust storm. The lander was generating an average of 280 watt-hours of energy per Martian day, or sol. The tau, or level of dust cover in the atmosphere, was estimated at 1.45 (typical tau levels outside of dust season range from 0.6-0.7).
https://blogs.nasa.gov/insight/2022/10/25/nasa-insights-power-level-as-of-oct-22-2022/ -
#287 by FutureSpaceTourist on 26 Oct, 2022 23:04
-
https://twitter.com/nasajpl/status/1585392859947335680Quote
Two @NASAMars missions have science findings to share! Join us on Oct. 27 at 11am PT (2pm ET) as we chat with @NASAInSight and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter experts who will explain how each spacecraft contributed to the discovery. Use #AskNASA for questions
-
#288 by Steve G on 27 Oct, 2022 15:13
-
Wouldn't that be something. However, if it was even a single, dormant microbe, the president would make that kind of announcement!
-
#289 by dsmillman on 27 Oct, 2022 15:44
-
Probably just a recent meteor impact that was detected by Insight's seismometer and MRO's cameras.
-
#290 by tolis on 27 Oct, 2022 16:29
-
Probably just a recent meteor impact that was detected by Insight's seismometer and MRO's cameras.
I second that. -
#291 by FutureSpaceTourist on 27 Oct, 2022 18:18
-
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-insight-lander-detects-stunning-meteoroid-impact-on-marsQuote
NASA’s InSight Lander Detects Stunning Meteoroid Impact on Mars
Oct. 27, 2022
The agency’s lander felt the ground shake during the impact while cameras aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted the yawning new crater from space.
NASA’s InSight lander recorded a magnitude 4 marsquake last Dec. 24, but scientists learned only later the cause of that quake: a meteoroid strike estimated to be one of the biggest seen on Mars since NASA began exploring the cosmos. What’s more, the meteoroid excavated boulder-size chunks of ice buried closer to the Martian equator than ever found before – a discovery with implications for NASA’s future plans to send astronauts to the Red Planet.
Scientists determined the quake resulted from a meteoroid impact when they looked at before-and-after images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and spotted a new, yawning crater. Offering a rare opportunity to see how a large impact shook the ground on Mars, the event and its effects are detailed in two papers published Thursday, Oct. 27, in the journal Science.
The meteoroid is estimated to have spanned 16 to 39 feet (5 to 12 meters) – small enough that it would have burned up in Earth’s atmosphere, but not in Mars’ thin atmosphere, which is just 1% as dense as our planet’s. The impact, in a region called Amazonis Planitia, blasted a crater roughly 492 feet (150 meters) across and 70 feet (21 meters) deep. Some of the ejecta thrown by the impact flew as far as 23 miles (37 kilometers) away.
With images and seismic data documenting the event, this is believed to be one of the largest craters ever witnessed forming any place in the solar system. Many larger craters exist on the Red Planet, but they are significantly older and predate any Mars mission.
This video includes a seismogram and sonification of the signals recorded by NASA’s InSight Mars lander, which detected a giant meteoroid strike on Dec. 24, 2021, the 1,094th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CNES/Imperial College London
“It’s unprecedented to find a fresh impact of this size,” said Ingrid Daubar of Brown University, who leads InSight’s Impact Science Working Group. “It’s an exciting moment in geologic history, and we got to witness it.”
InSight has seen its power drastically decline in recent months due to dust settling on its solar panels. The spacecraft now is expected to shut down within the next six weeks, bringing the mission’s science to an end.
InSight is studying the planet’s crust, mantle, and core. Seismic waves are key to the mission and have revealed the size, depth, and composition of Mars’ inner layers. Since landing in November 2018, InSight has detected 1,318 marsquakes, including several caused by smaller meteoroid impacts.
But the quake resulting from last December’s impact was the first observed to have surface waves – a kind of seismic wave that ripples along the top of a planet’s crust. The second of the two Science papers related to the big impact describes how scientists use these waves to study the structure of Mars’ crust.
Crater Hunters
In late 2021, InSight scientists reported to the rest of the team they had detected a major marsquake on Dec. 24. The crater was first spotted on Feb. 11, 2022, by scientists working at Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS), which built and operates two cameras aboard MRO. The Context Camera (CTX) provides black-and-white, medium-resolution images, while the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) produces daily maps of the entire planet, allowing scientists to track large-scale weather changes like the recent regional dust storm that further diminished InSight’s solar power.
The impact’s blast zone was visible in MARCI data that allowed the team to pin down a 24-hour period within which the impact occurred. These observations correlated with the seismic epicenter, conclusively demonstrating that a meteoroid impact caused the large Dec. 24 marsquake.
“The image of the impact was unlike any I had seen before, with the massive crater, the exposed ice, and the dramatic blast zone preserved in the Martian dust,” said Liliya Posiolova, who leads the Orbital Science and Operations Group at MSSS. “I couldn’t help but imagine what it must have been like to witness the impact, the atmospheric blast, and debris ejected miles downrange.”
This animation depicts a flyover of a meteoroid impact crater on Mars that’s surrounded by boulder-size chunks of ice. The animation was created using data from the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Establishing the rate at which craters appear on Mars is critical for refining the planet’s geologic timeline. On older surfaces, such as those of Mars and our Moon, there are more craters than on Earth; on our planet, the processes of erosion and plate tectonics erase older features from the surface.
New craters also expose materials below the surface. In this case, large chunks of ice scattered by the impact were viewed by MRO’s High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) color camera.
Subsurface ice will be a vital resource for astronauts, who could use it for a variety of needs, including drinking water, agriculture, and rocket propellant. Buried ice has never been spotted this close to the Martian equator, which, as the warmest part of Mars, is an appealing location for astronauts.
More About the Missions
JPL manages InSight and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA’s Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, InSight spacecraft (including its cruise stage and lander), and supports spacecraft operations for both missions.
Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego built and operates the Context Camera and MARCI camera. University of Arizona built and operates the HiRISE camera.
A number of European partners, including France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors, and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) supplied a passive laser retroreflector.
Image caption:QuoteBoulder-size blocks of water ice can be seen around the rim of an impact crater on Mars, as viewed by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE camera) aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The crater was formed Dec. 24, 2021, by a meteoroid strike in the Amazonis Planitia region. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
-
#292 by jimvela on 27 Oct, 2022 19:49
-
Might be a good location to send the first Starship survey and ISRU demonstration mission someday...
-
#293 by eeergo on 27 Oct, 2022 21:08
-
Beyond the geological awesomeness recorded by SEIS from the impact itself in order to derive crustal characteristics, and the record-setting traits of such an event, this stroke of luck is eye-popping. The impact coming a few weeks later, or absent the clever (heroic?) power management, the "early warning" capability a seismometer on the Martian ground provides would simply not be there, and orbital cameras would probably never have found the crater until weeks or months after its formation. This would most likely have sublimated away any ice blasted out.
Reminds me of GRBs serving as warning for X-ray observations, or GWs for GRBs... that's why they call it multimessenger astronomy, just as this could also be framed as "multimessenger exogeology".
Also quite astounding to see so much *pure* ice surviving the heat of the blast, the fragmentation, and -most of all- being exposed on the surface for TWO months (HIRISE pic of the Dec 24th crater is from Feb 27th), at tropical latitudes (35ºN) !! Surprising no clear strata are visible on the crater walls, although I guess they might have gotten covered by settling dust in the aftermath.
Articles are here, btw: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7704 // https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7157
Below is the picture of the second (less photogenic) impact, which actually took place a few months earlier and was only discovered after a data review. It struck a cliff wall, threading the needle!
-
#294 by whitelancer64 on 27 Oct, 2022 21:37
-
Beyond the geological awesomeness recorded by SEIS from the impact itself in order to derive crustal characteristics, and the record-setting traits of such an event, this stroke of luck is eye-popping. The impact coming a few weeks later, or absent the clever (heroic?) power management, the "early warning" capability a seismometer on the Martian ground provides would simply not be there, and orbital cameras would probably never have found the crater until weeks or months after its formation. This would most likely have sublimated away any ice blasted out.
Reminds me of GRBs serving as warning for X-ray observations, or GWs for GRBs... that's why they call it multimessenger astronomy, just as this could also be framed as "multimessenger exogeology".
Also quite astounding to see so much *pure* ice surviving the heat of the blast, the fragmentation, and -most of all- being exposed on the surface for TWO months (HIRISE pic of the Dec 24th crater is from Feb 27th), at tropical latitudes (35ºN) !! Surprising no clear strata are visible on the crater walls, although I guess they might have gotten covered by settling dust in the aftermath.
Articles are here, btw: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7704 // https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7157
Below is the picture of the second (less photogenic) impact, which actually took place a few months earlier and was only discovered after a data review. It struck a cliff wall, threading the needle!
It seems to me that since the seismographic signal of the impact event was recorded December 24, 2021; ten months ago, there was no danger of missing the signal due to the current low power levels.
Also, it did take months to find the impact crater, it wasn't until February 11 that the team found imagery of a fresh crater. MRO's MARCI camera generates lower resolution images over large areas of Mars as it orbits. They were lucky enough that MRO passed over the impact site twice within a 24 hour period, one pass prior to impact and another afterwards.
IOW, they did not direct MRO to take images of the impact site immediately after detection. The HIRISE imagery was taken only after the crater was found.
-
#295 by Dalhousie on 28 Oct, 2022 06:56
-
At 170 m vs. 130 m across, Boxhole crater in the NT is a near match for this one. The Henbury cluster, also in the NT, is a near match for that the second site.
https://meteoritegallery.com/boxhole-iiiab/
https://meteoritegallery.com/henbury-iiiab/
-
#296 by FutureSpaceTourist on 01 Nov, 2022 07:45
-
https://twitter.com/insightimagebot/status/1587350491935162376Quote
Sol 1395: Instrument Context Camera (ICC), taken at 17:20:32.460 (local mean solar time)
https://twitter.com/insightimagebot/status/1587350495554899969QuoteSol 1395: Instrument Deployment Camera (IDC), taken at 17:21:10.416 (local mean solar time)
-
#297 by Rondaz on 02 Nov, 2022 01:43
-
NASA InSight’s Power Level as of Oct. 31, 2022
Tony Greicius Posted on November 1, 2022
As of October 31, 2022, InSight is generating an average between 280 and 290 watt-hours of energy per Martian day, or sol. The tau, or level of dust cover in the atmosphere, was estimated at 1.33 (typical tau levels outside of dust season range from 0.6-0.7).
https://blogs.nasa.gov/insight/2022/11/01/nasa-insights-power-level-as-of-oct-31-2022/ -
#298 by Star One on 03 Nov, 2022 13:44
-
Quote
Mars might be, geologically speaking, not quite dead.
Researchers have analyzed a slew of recent temblors on the Red Planet and shown that these Marsquakes are probably caused by magma moving deep under the Martian surface. That’s evidence that Mars is still volcanically active, the researchers report October 27 in Nature Astronomy.
Since touching down on Mars four years ago, NASA’s InSight lander has detected more than 1,000 Marsquakes (SN: 11/26/18). Its seismometer records seismic waves, which reveal information about a temblor’s size and location.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/mars-quakes-volcanic-activity-planet-nasa-insight -
#299 by Rondaz on 08 Nov, 2022 23:22
-
NASA InSight’s Power Level as of Nov. 5, 2022
Naomi Hartono Posted on November 8, 2022
As of Nov. 5, 2022, InSight is generating an average of 310 watt-hours of energy per Martian day, or sol. The tau, or level of dust cover in the atmosphere, was estimated at 1.33 (typical tau levels outside of dust season range from 0.6-0.7).
https://blogs.nasa.gov/insight/2022/11/08/nasa-insights-power-level-as-of-nov-5-2022/