“It's assumed InSight may have reached the end of its operations,” NASA said. InSight was the first spacecraft to document a marsquake.
This image released by NASA on Monday, Dec. 19, 2022, shows NASA’s InSight lander on Mars. The lander’s power levels have been dwindling for months because of all the dust coating its solar panels. While ground controllers at California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory knew the end was near, they did not expect InSight to fall silent over the weekend. , well short of the intended 16 feet . NASA declared it dead nearly two years ago.
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.The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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NASA Mars lander InSight falls silent after 4 yearsIt could be the end of the red dusty line for NASA's InSight lander on Mars. The lander has fallen silent after four years of operation.
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NASA Mars lander InSight falls silent after 4 yearsIt could be the end of the red dusty line for NASA's InSight lander on Mars. The lander has fallen silent after four years of operation.
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NASA Mars lander InSight falls silent after 4 yearsCAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — It could be the end of the red dusty line for NASA’s InSight lander, which has fallen silent after four years on Mars. The lander’s power levels have been dwindling for months because of all the dust coating its solar panels.
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NASA Mars lander InSight falls silent after four yearsIt could be the end of the red dusty line for NASA's InSight lander, which has fallen silent after four years on Mars.
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