A NASA lander has recorded a sunrise on Mars. This is where the Polish “mole” was dug

The probe has been on the surface of Mars since November 2018, roughly 3.5 years (or more than 1,200 sols). He studies the surface and interior of the Red Planet on a daily basis, but from time to time he will surprise us by sending an interesting image back to Earth (which rover is more famous for than InSight).

The probe recorded the sunrise from the surface of Mars

This time around, the rover’s camera captured a sunrise from Mars in a series of images. Then the researchers put them together into a short video that they posted as a gif on Twitter. From this perspective, our diurnal star appears to be much smaller than the star visible from the Earth’s surface.

I will never get bored of the sunrise on Mars. Every morning, this distant point climbs higher and higher in the sky giving me the energy for another round of listening to the bangs under my feet

Posted on the mission’s Twitter profile.

The authors of the tweet emphasized the importance of the following “portions” of solar energy you receive every day for the lander. Unlike m.at. For Perseverance and Curiosity roving, radioisotope and thermoelectric generators, InSight uses only solar energy.

Interestingly, about a year ago, InSight had very serious problems on the surface of Mars. NASA had to suspend research for a while and put the equipment to sleep, because solar panels covered in a thick layer of Martian dust did not provide the right amount of energy. Electricity. Fortunately, the issues were resolved and InSight resumed the search.

Thanks to this mission, scientists were able to establish the existence of “Mars earthquakes” on the Red Planet, which – as it turned out later – are very common there. It’s also very powerful (although not quite the same on Earth). The magnitude of the earthquakes in mid-2021 was 4.2.

Some people also associate the InSight mission with the Polish so-called “mole”, that is, the hacker, who was supposed to drill a five-meter hole in the surface of the planet. Unfortunately – due to a different surface structure than was assumed before the old NASA – the mission could not be completed and the idea was finally abandoned.

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