It may be the end of the red dusty line for NASA‘s InSight lander, which has been silent on Mars for four years.
Because of all the dust coating the lander’s solar panels, its power levels have been dwindling for months. Ground controllers at California’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory were aware that the mission was coming to an end, but NASA reported that InSight did not respond to communications from Earth on Sunday.
“It’s assumed InSight may have reached the end of its operations,” NASA said late Monday, adding that the spacecraft’s last communication was on Thursday. “It’s unknown what prompted the change in its energy.”
Just in case, the team will keep attempting to contact InSight.
InSight, which landed on Mars in 2018, was the first spacecraft to record a marsquake. With its French-built seismometer, it detected over 1,300 marsquakes, including several caused by meteoroid strikes. According to NASA, the most recent marsquake detected by InSight earlier this year shook the ground for at least six hours.
The seismometer readings shed light on the interior of Mars.
Last week, scientists announced that InSight had captured a Martian dust devil not only in images but also in sound. In 2021, the whirling column of dust happened to blow directly over the lander’s microphone.
The lander’s other main instrument, on the other hand, had nothing but problems.
A German digging device intended to measure the temperature of Mars’ interior never got deeper than a few feet (half a meter), falling far short of the intended 16 feet (5 meters). It was declared dead by NASA nearly two years ago.
InSight recently returned one final selfie, which NASA shared on Twitter on Monday.
“My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send,” the team wrote on behalf of InSight. “Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will — but I’ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me.”
NASA still has two active rovers on Mars: Curiosity, which has been exploring the planet’s surface since 2012, and Perseverance, which arrived earlier this year.
Perseverance is currently constructing a sample depot, with the intention of leaving 10 tubes of rock cores on the Martian surface as a backup to samples on the rover itself. NASA intends to return some of these samples to Earth within a decade as part of its ongoing search for signs of ancient microscopic life on Mars.
Perseverance is also accompanied by Ingenuity, a mini helicopter. It recently completed its 37th flight, giving it more than an hour of Martian flight time.
