Just over four years after reaching the martian surface, NASA has officially announced the end of its InSight lander mission.
Just over four years after reaching Mars, NASA has officially announced the end of its InSight lander mission.
The declaration came on Wednesday, December 21, after NASA failed to make contact with the lander across two consecutive attempts, leading the mission team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to conclude that InSight’s solar-powered batteries had run out of energy, a state referred to as “dead bus.”
InSight — short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport — had been gradually losing power due to a build-up of dust on its solar panels.
