NASA's InSight lander retires alone on Mars

Out of battery, NASA's InSight lander begins lonely retirement on red planet Mars | The rover detected vibrations on the surface of Mars and sent data to NASA scientists, taking pictures of the dusty Martian world.

Out of battery, NASA's InSight lander begins lonely retirement on red planet Mars | The rover detected vibrations on the Martian surface and sent that data to NASA scientists, taking pictures of the dusty Martian world. At the end of that duty, Insight is going to retirement on Mars; Over time, the remaining parts, including its solar panels, will become covered in red dust, NASA said. NASA researchers knew about this end of InSight.

Its solar panels provided the electricity needed to keep the Insight running. But after reaching Mars, the solar panels started to collect dust. Given that situation, NASA has assumed that the Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigation, Geodesy and Heat Transport (INSIGHT) lander will be decommissioned this summer. The Mars lander was extended by several months due to a sudden favorable climate. However, that extra time was also completed now. And with the realization that InSight is nearing the end of its life cycle, NASA's posts on the Twitter page of the first Mars lander are getting emotional, according to technology site Verge.

In a statement, NASA said the InSight lander last made contact with Earth on December 15. Even then, engineers from the space research agency tried to keep in touch with InSight. But since there was no response from InSight, they assumed that the lander's battery had run out. With the retirement of InSight, the Verge writes that NASA's most successful mission to Mars has come to an end.

After launching in May 2018, InSight landed on Mars in November. The lander's seismometer marked over a thousand pulses on the Martian surface. Most of these are very weak, but earlier this year InSight detected a 5-magnitude tremor on the Richter scale. Space scientists are trying to better understand the structure of Mars by analyzing the data sent by InSight.

Regarding InSight's retirement, Mission Chief Bruce Bernard said, "For the past four years, we have considered InSight our friend and colleague on Mars, so saying goodbye is difficult. But the whole of retirement has been achieved by Insight.