NASA's InSight lander: The lonely fate of a robot on Mars

More than 250 million kilometers away from home, the NASA InSight lander is shutting down because of the red dust that sealed its fate.

The four-year-old robot is running out of power because its solar panels are no longer visible. Its seismometer is likely to be turned off sometime in June, as one by one its instruments are being taken offline.

What the team discovered, what questions are left to answer, and what will happen to the little lander are all discussed by Dr. Catherine Johnson, who is a professor in the department of earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences.

What did the lander find?

The first outer space robot to study the inside of Mars was this one. In order to help us figure out how rocky planets in our solar system formed, it made a number of measurements. The seismometer needs to remain in one place to measure very tiny ground motions, which is why the InSight has been a stationary lander.

We learned a lot about the questions we set out to address, such as understanding the thickness of Mars' crust, how big its metal core is, and when and where marsquakes occur.

I have been working on the data from the magnetometer. We have learned that the rocks beneath the landing site are strongly magnetized and that there are time variations in the planet's magnetic field. There are variations in the magnetic field from day to night.

Is the lander still alive or dead?

The InSight landers will sleep, and it could wake up in the future. The instruments will be turned off and we will no longer be able to talk to it. If the solar panels were to be cleared by a strong gust of wind, the operations team could put software in place that would allow us to communicate with it.

I will be sad when it closes. You get attached to your machines. You can get attached to a robot if you watch a Roomba go around the living room. When you get to be part of something that is difficult to do and make observations that are a first in some way, there is some attachment.

All the instruments that have been working are not enough power to keep them going. It would be great to use the instruments that are working so well.

Mars has mysteries to offer.

The occurrence of marsquakes appears to be seasonal in nature, and we don't know why. We have been able to get data for close to two Mars years, so we know it is not a coincidence, and we can see this pattern repeating, with more earthquakes at certain times of the Martian year. One of the biggest mysteries for us is why earthquakes happen this way.

There are fluctuations in the magnetic field that are minutes-long or shorter. Some of these look like little waves in the magnetic field and we don't know why they happen, is there also a seasonal dependence in their occurrence?

Hopefully, another mission will land on Mars with the same equipment as InSight so we can continue to explore the mysteries of the planet.

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