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The retirement of a major space mission is an occasion for both sadness and gratitude. On Wednesday, NASA called an official end to the Mars InSight lander’s mission to study the interior of the red planet. We’ve known this day was coming, ever since it became clear dust was choking out InSight’s power supply by blocking light from reaching its solar panels.
„Mission controllers at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California were unable to contact the lander after two consecutive attempts, leading them to conclude the spacecraft’s solar-powered batteries have run out of energy — a state engineers refer to as ‚dead bus,'“ NASA said in a statement.
The lander initially didn’t respond to communications from Earth on Dec. 18. „The lander’s power has been declining for months, as expected, and it’s assumed InSight may have reached its end of operations,“ the agency said at the time. That prediction has now come true. It was last in touch on Dec.
