The InSight Mars Lander Mission May Finally Be Over

In October, InSight hunkered down to endure a massive dust storm. NASA confirmed to Gizmodo at the time that the official time frame for the mission’s end (i.e. InSight’s death) was between October 2022 and January 2023.

The most recent InSight power level update came on December 12, when InSight reported generating an average of 285 watt-hours of energy per sol. That’s a sharp reduction from the lander’s 500 watt-hours per sol earlier this year, which already was a precipitous drop-off from the original 5,000 watt-hours per sol when it first arrived on Mars.

The level of dust cover in the atmosphere on December 12 was .96, according to InSight’s updates. The typical dust cover range at this time of the year is between .6 and .7. Luck, it seems, has finally run out for the stationary spacecraft on Mars.

InSight is the only Mars mission with a seismometer, meaning that once the lander is gone NASA will no longer have an ear listening to the deep internal workings of Mars. But older data keeps delivering new findings: This October, NASA scientists announced that the lander detected two meteorite impacts on the Martian surface in December 2021, which reverberated across the planet’s surface. Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, described the finding as an “awesome capstone science result” in a press conference at the time; Glaze added that InSight was “literally going out with a bang.”

If this really is the end, then thank you, InSight, for all that you’ve revealed about the Red Planet. But I’m holding out hope for whatever last-minute morsels you see fit to give up.

More: The Best Photos From Mars in 2022

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