The seismometer might keep working through September.
However, the mission team plans to program InSight to allow the seismometer to operate"perhaps until the end of August or into early September," according to a Tuesday "InSight hasn't finished teaching us about Mars yet," Lori Glaze, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, said in the statement."We're going to get every last bit of science we can before the lander concludes operations.
"It leaves the lander unprotected from sudden, unexpected events that ground controllers wouldn't have time to respond to," JPL officials wrote in the press release. Mars is several minutes' radio communication distance from Earth, meaning it's impossible for controllers to respond instantly to events on the Red Planet.
The lander touched down in 2018 for what was expected to be nearly two Earth years of science, and has been extended due to its successful work in assessing the Red Planet's interior and measuring marsquakes.
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