The lander's power levels have been dwindling for months because of all the dust coating its solar panels. Ground controllers at California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory knew the end was near, but NASA reported that InSight unexpectedly didn't 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 its last communication was Thursday. "It's unknown what prompted the change in its energy."
The team will keep trying to contact InSight, just in case.
InSight landed on Mars in 2018 and was the first spacecraft to document a marsquake. It detected more than 1,300 marsquakes with its French-built seismometer, including several caused by meteoroid strikes. The most recent marsquake sensed by InSight, earlier this year, left the ground shaking for at least six hours, according to NASA. The seismometer readings shed light on Mars' interior.
Just last week, scientists revealed that InSight scored another first, capturing a Martian dust devil not just in pictures, but sound. In a stroke of luck, the whirling column of dust blew directly over the lander in 2021 when its microphone was on.
The lander's other main instrument, however, encountered nothing but trouble.
A German digging device — meant to measure the temperature of Mars' interior — never made it deeper than a couple feet (half a meter), well short of the intended 16 feet (5 meters). NASA declared it dead nearly two years ago.
InSight recently sent back one last selfie, shared by NASA via Twitter on Monday. the team wrote on InSight's behalf:
"My power's really low, so this may be the last image I can send. 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, roaming the surface since 2012, and Perseverance, which arrived early last year.
Perseverance is in the midst of creating a sample depot; the plan is to leave 10 tubes of rock cores on the Martian surface as a backup to samples on the rover itself. NASA plans to bring some of these samples back to Earth in a decade, in its longtime search for signs of ancient microscopic life on Mars.
Perseverance also has a companion: a mini helicopter named Ingenuity. It just completed its 37th flight and has now logged more than an hour of Martian flight time.
Reader Comments
that upper central portion looks a lot like ...[Link]
what are the odds that the two of them hooked up and...
well you know...🙄
it must have been electric 🤦♂️
and now they're both, um...
spent.
S udden I nsight D eactivation S yndrome
codis what's up with the digger ? didn't your guys put the solar powered batteries on it this time instead of the wind-up thingy ? 🤣
Baybars nasa observed a sudden movement of bright blue white phosphor-luminescence and then a strange electromagnetic flash just before Insight fell through the ice... 😏
I believe the Mars Rat (TM) sabotaged the lander, attacking the cables and whatnot. This one: [Link]
man you're optimistic, i was thinking our current civilization will be lucky to survive through the motherweffers agenda, cheers
Another occasion were NASA was arguably caught in a fraud red-handed ...
yes i recall but vaguely; the overriding aspect demonstrating fraud is their inability to publish photographs of mars' night sky or the moon's or any other place where a supposed nasa vehicle has landed.
someday soon i imagine an AI type computer will be able to generate these night sky photos which nasa will say they accidentally discovered in a shoebox of a deceased former employee's desk.
The first one is, there is already life on Mars, and they cover it up. The perceived inablity to produce night sky photos could be explained by the secrecy, albeit seems is quite a stretch to me.
The second theory is simpler, more elegant, and preferred by Occam's Razor. Just watch the movie "Capricorn One" from 1978 [Link]
here's my postulate to your conflicting theories: agreed, life on mars existed maybe still exists, and if it exists presently, then the inhabitants definitely shave with Occam's Razor ...or Gillette, i'm not sure. 😉
and, either way, it seems we agree that nasa is a multi billion dollar boondoggle !
Ken
Just ...maybe... kidding, hmmm I recall a couple of good comments on one of the last stories. I will await someone(s) responding to you DW, how depressing😣
Let's call in graeme15 should he have some brilliant insight to your query.
NASA did it to itself.
Oh snap…
Oh, I know what happened - they did anticipate it, but little did they suspect those snarky Martians would come out in the middle of the night and place dust on the panels and in the gears and whatnot and then they would take ownership of the bot.....I think this could have application on planet earth - those Martians - they are so smart!
Sort of like what this fella talked about on planet earth....(let me see if I can find it in time...
~~~time!~~~~~
Mario Savio I think his name was...
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