Four years after it landed on the surface of the red planet, NASA announced on Wednesday that its Mars InSight lander, the first robotic probe specifically created to study the deep interior of a far-off world, has been officially retired.
When two consecutive attempts to re-establish radio contact with the lander failed, indicating that InSight’s solar-powered batteries had run out of power, mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles decided the mission was over.
Increasing amounts of dust on the spacecraft’s solar panels, which are reducing the capacity of its batteries to recharge, led NASA to predict in late October that the spacecraft would reach the end of its operational life in a matter of weeks.
Just in case, JPL engineers will keep listening for a signal from the lander, but hearing from InSight again is unlikely, according to NASA. The last time the three-legged stationary probe spoke with Earth was on December 15.
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