back to article NASA's Mars InSight uploads its (probably) final image, shares it in a tweet

In a year during which AI started making art and conversation, the question of whether a robot can make you cry with a tweet seems very apt. NASA's Mars InSight probe might have made the answer to that question "Yes". As The Register has previously reported, the probe landed in 2018 and has since done sterling work …

  1. HMcG

    Kids these days

    Look at Voyager 1. Kids these days have no stamina.

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge
      Alien

      Re: Kids these days

      This is why the adults use reel-to-reel tape and RTGs.

  2. Neil Barnes Silver badge

    Obligatory XKCD

    https://xkcd.com/695/

    Did I do a good job? Guys?

    1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

      Re: Obligatory XKCD

      That's up their with Silent Running as completely heart breaking.

      1. DropBear

        Re: Obligatory XKCD

        Dang... last seen that movie as a kid somewhere in the eighties, still left its mark on me... gotta re-watch it one of these days for sure.

  3. BebopWeBop
    Devil

    All those expensive gadgets the boffins attached to it, they couldn't afford a feather duster?

    A Clanger nicked it for spring cleaning.

  4. b0llchit Silver badge
    Happy

    Car wash

    ...has no facility to shake off dust...

    They should send a mobile car wash facility to Mars. There are several probes up there that could be helped with a nice cleanin' (and a pine scent hanger).

    1. A. Coatsworth Silver badge
      Holmes

      Re: Car wash

      And it will give the probes the opportunity to finally, beyond any reasonable doubt, find liquid water on Mars!

    2. ravenviz Silver badge

      Re: Car wash

      If it’s anything like the Shell garage at the bottom of my road it will always be broken.

  5. Potemkine! Silver badge

    In a year during which AI started making art and conversation, the question of whether a robot can make you cry with a tweet seems very apt.

    NASA's Mars InSight probe might have made the answer to that question "Yes".

    Does anyone really believe the probe made the tweet?

    == Bring us Dabbsy back! ==

    1. b0llchit Silver badge
      Joke

      Does anyone really believe the probe made the tweet?

      Yes! There is life on Mars and it can fly and make sounds. We hear this as tweets. On Mars it is a survival skill.

      This is the untold story why we pour so many giga bucks into Mars exploration. In reality it is a contact situation that keeps being interrupted by sand on the solar panels and cameras. I'm wondering whether the Marsian tweets really mean "stop polluting our redish planet with metal barges and radiating heaters".

    2. Sceptic Tank Silver badge

      I find your lack of faith disturbing.

  6. Zenubi

    Best Ending

    To an article I have read for years

  7. breakfast
    Mushroom

    Risk of the travel time

    "We launched our probe to Mars and gave it the ability to tweet, little anticipating that by the time it arrived on the planet the man whose company built the rocket we used to launch it would have bought Twitter and burnt it to the ground in a fit of pique."

  8. Sceptic Tank Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Lander Rover Recovery Vehicle

    This is why there should not be missions to dusty places like Mars. Send them to Europa where there is plenty water to wash the accumulated dust and bugs of the windshield.

    Wipe off occasionally =====>

    1. werdsmith Silver badge

      Re: Lander Rover Recovery Vehicle

      At 110K the water on Europa surface may as well be rock. But it you have a few Myr to wait you might get some convective melt come up. Or a plume if you are very lucky.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Lander Rover Recovery Vehicle

        ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS, EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Lander Rover Recovery Vehicle

          But, I bring pizza: pepperoni?

  9. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

    And I thought this was going to be another story about a bot being banned from Twitter.

  10. ComputerSays_noAbsolutelyNo Silver badge
    Pint

    Bringing maille and scale armour to new worlds

    As a friend of history and re-enactment, I salute the first extraterrestrial knight in dusty armour.

    https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/34143/whats-the-role-of-the-chainmail-and-scale-armor-on-insights-wts

  11. Kurgan

    While I'm sure there are valid reasons, I really dont'get how a simple brush, to be used by the robotic arm that all of that landers and rovers ALREADY HAVE, could not be sent to Mars.

    1. lglethal Silver badge
      Boffin

      It's a simple trade-off of cost, weight, complexity, and useful life.

      As it was already mentioned in the article InSight has already long overlived it's expected life, without needing a brush. So when you're designing for a set life and you can do that without adding yet another complex part, with it's own weight and cost, then naturally you leave it off. Every kilogram of weight on a Mars lander adds a massive cost, not least because you add about 20kg of fuel for each kilogram you want to send to Mars.

      It would be nice to just leave the landers and rovers to run indefinitely, but the costs don't just end with launch. There are costs involved with collecting the data that the rovers and landers send back (such as the costs involved with co-ordinating first the satellites above Mars to collect the transmission from the surface, and then the costs of operating the deep space network to collect the throughput signals), there are costs involved in maintaining teams to process the information coming in, as well as storage costs for the data. Finally, there are costs in maintaining teams that can handle troubleshooting and over the air maintenance of the landers/rovers. Even where those people are primarily working other projects, taking them away to work temporarily on these lander/rover projects does come with a cost.

      At some point, you just have to decide that you have all the data that you need and that the money is better spent elsewhere. InSight performed excellently, collected reams of excellent data, but was always going to slide slowly into the long sleep. It's done it's job for Mankind, now it can rest a bit... ;)

      1. Gordon 10
        Alien

        Besides - it's just been added to V'ger's backlog. It'll be around in about 2270 to collect it.

      2. My other car WAS an IAV Stryker

        "Maintaining Teams"

        Labor costs are often the worst part of the defense/aerospace project. And the more the project is delayed/extended, the more hours the folks tack on and the more ka-ching goes the gov't piggy bank.

  12. Just A Quick Comment
    Happy

    Another great achievement

    This is America at her best. Making science and reason work for humanity not denying it!

    1. lglethal Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: Another great achievement

      This is the World at her best. Making science and reason work for humanity not denying it!

      Fixed that for you. ;)

      InSight was a major multinational project. The Lander was from the US, the Seismometer was French, the Mole was led by Germany with a large Polish input, the weather station was from Spain. Universities in Switzerland, and Austria played their own parts in the site selection and data processing. I'm sure I've missed other places too. Not to mention within the teams themselves, where you can add dozens more nationalities. Our small Mole team based in Bremen, Germany featured Germans, Australians, Dutch, Greek, Polish, and Indian members at various times.

      InSight really was a true multinational project, and greatly successful for it.

  13. ravenviz Silver badge

    lander's first image

    I seem to recall that first image was to check the lander landed and could transmit an image back. Looking at the specks and flakes on the lens window, could there be an opportunity for a polarised light microscopy instrument on future missions?

  14. MarcM

    Helicopter as duster

    Why not use ingenuity ti blow the dust away?

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