A NASA published an image of the InSight Lander robot on Marscaptured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
On X, formerly Twitter, the agency teased users asking if they could find the robot in the photo, amid the Martian dust environment.
Can you spot @NASAInSight?
The retired lander was recently spotted by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. By studying InSight’s landing site over time, scientists can see how quickly dust accumulates, which helps estimate the age of other surface disturbances. pic.twitter.com/ZsazACkZSs
— NASA Mars (@NASAMars) May 6, 2024
The speed at which dust accumulates on the robot helps estimate the age of other changes on the red planet’s surface, the agency said.
The Insight Lander was the first robot sent to Mars to study in depth the planet’s interior structures, crust, mantle and core. Their goal was to understand the processes that formed rocky planets more than 4 billion years ago.
The robot was launched in May 2018, and its mission ended in December 2022.
According to the University of Arizona, the InSight Lander landed in a very dusty area and was covered in so much dust that it became difficult to discern, as in the image released by NASA. The InSight landing itself blew up dust.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter probe, which took the photograph, was launched in August 2005 with the aim of looking for evidence that water existed on the planet’s surface for long periods of time.
While other missions to Mars have provided clues that water once roamed the Martian surface, it remains a mystery whether the resource was present long enough to make the environment habitable.
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