LOS ANGELES, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) — NASA’s InSight lander has completed its mission following more than four years of collecting unique science on Mars, the agency announced Wednesday.
Mission controllers at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California were unable to contact the lander following two consecutive attempts, leading them to conclude that the solar rover’s batteries had run out of power — what engineers refer to as a “dead bus.”
And NASA had decided earlier to declare the mission over if it failed in two attempts to contact the lander.
The last time Insight made contact with Earth was on December 15, according to NASA.
InSight was launched in May 2018 to study the depths of the interior of Mars. It landed safely on the Red Planet in late November 2018, marking NASA’s first landing on Mars since Curiosity in 2012.
The spacecraft has detected regarding 1,300 Martian earthquakes, and has made countless scientific discoveries in the past more than four years, according to the agency.
