NASA’s retired InSight lander, now covered in Martian dust, continues to offer insights into Mars through images captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Over its four-year mission, InSight unveiled the inner workings of the Red Planet by detecting marsquakes and studying its structure. Even after its retirement, scientists use its site to monitor Martian dust activity and understand the processes shaping the planet’s landscape.
InSight’s Legacy Captured by Mars Orbiter
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) recently captured an image of the retired InSight lander, showing the thick layer of dust that has settled on its solar panels. Taken on October 23 by MRO’s High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, the photo reveals that InSight’s solar panels now share the reddish-brown hue of the Martian surface.
Since landing in November 2018, InSight became the first mission to detect marsquakes, uncovering valuable insights about the planet’s crust, mantle, and core. Over its four-year mission, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, which managed the project, used images from InSight and HiRISE to monitor dust accumulation on the stationary lander. This dust buildup directly impacted the lander’s ability to generate power, as it gradually reduced the efficiency of its solar panels.
“Even though we’re no longer hearing from InSight, it’s still teaching us about Mars.”
Ingrid Daubar, Science Team Member
The End of an Era for InSight
NASA retired InSight in December 2022, after the lander ran out of power and stopped communicating with Earth during its extended mission. But engineers continued listening for radio signals from the lander in case wind cleared enough dust from the spacecraft’s solar panels for its batteries to recharge. Having detected no changes over the past two years, NASA will stop listening for InSight at the end of this year.
Scientists requested the recent HiRISE image as a farewell to InSight, as well as to monitor how its landing site has changed over time.
“Even though we’re no longer hearing from InSight, it’s still teaching us about Mars,” said science team member Ingrid Daubar of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. “By monitoring how much dust collects on the surface — and how much gets vacuumed away by wind and dust devils — we learn more about the wind, dust cycle, and other processes that shape the planet.”
NASA’s InSight Mars lander acquires the same reddish-brown hue as the rest of the planet in a set of images from 2018 to 2024 that were captured by the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter using its High-Resolution Imagine Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Tracking Dust Devils and Craters
Dust is a driving force across Mars, shaping both the atmosphere and landscape. Studying it helps scientists understand the planet and engineers prepare for future missions (solar-powered and otherwise), since dust can get into sensitive mechanical parts.
When InSight was still active, scientists matched MRO images of dust devil tracks (see below) winding across the landscape with data from the lander’s wind sensors, finding these whirling weather phenomena subside in the winter and pick up again in the summer.
The imagery also helped with the study of meteoroid impacts on the Martian surface. The more craters a region has, the older the surface there is. (This isn’t the case with Earth’s surface, which is constantly recycled as tectonic plates slide over one another.) The marks around these craters fade with time. Understanding how fast dust covers them helps to ascertain a crater’s age.
Fading Craters and Blasts: Mars Through Time
Another way to estimate how quickly craters fade has been studying the ring of blast marks left by InSight’s retrorocket thrusters during landing. Much more prominent in 2018, those dark marks are now returning to the red-brown color of the surrounding terrain.
HiRISE has captured many other spacecraft images, including those of NASA’s Perseverance and Curiosity rovers, which are still exploring Mars, as well as inactive missions, like the Spirit and Opportunity rovers and the Phoenix lander.
“It feels a little bittersweet to look at InSight now. It was a successful mission that produced lots of great science. Of course, it would have been nice if it kept going forever, but we knew that wouldn’t happen,” Daubar said.
More About MRO and InSight
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and InSight missions represent major milestones in NASA’s exploration of Mars, each contributing uniquely to our understanding of the Red Planet.
The MRO, managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), is a multi-functional spacecraft designed to study Mars from orbit. Its High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, operated by the University of Arizona and built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., provides detailed images of the Martian surface, enabling the study of geological features and the monitoring of changes over time. Since its launch, the MRO has played a critical role in scouting landing sites for other missions and supporting active surface explorers.
The InSight mission, part of NASA’s Discovery Program, focused on studying Mars’ interior structure to better understand the planet’s geological history. Managed by JPL and built by Lockheed Martin Space, the mission featured significant international collaboration. France’s CNES led the development of the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument, with contributions from institutions in Germany, Switzerland, the UK, and the US. Germany’s DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3), with input from partners in Poland and Spain. Spain’s CAB also contributed temperature and wind sensors. Launched in 2018, InSight made groundbreaking discoveries, including the detection of marsquakes, before concluding its mission in 2022.
Together, MRO and InSight exemplify the power of international partnerships and cutting-edge technology in advancing our understanding of Mars and laying the groundwork for future exploration.
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