‘My power’s really low…’ ; NASA's Insight lander falls silent after 4 years

After four years of it listening to the faintest rumblings under the surface of Mars, the InSight lander has fallen silent on the Red Planet. The lander did not respond to communications from Earth, indicating a loss of signal as its power goes down to nil due to its inability to recharge its batteries.

 

"The lander’s power has been declining for months, as expected, and it’s assumed InSight may have reached its end of operations. It’s unknown what prompted the change in its energy; the last time the mission contacted the spacecraft was on Dec. 15, 2022," Nasa said in an update.

 

 

Dust has completely covered the solar panels on the spacecraft, diminishing its recharge and power capacity. While the mission was aimed for one Mars year (about two Earth years), the InSight lander worked for double that mission timeline after it landed on the Red Planet.

 

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.

 

 

 

The spacecraft in its final message with a picture said, "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."

 

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.

 

The spacecraft during its extended mission has recorded some of the biggest quakes on Mars including the biggest one. 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.