Controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, have lost all contact with the Mars InSight lander after four years of successful operations, NASA announced in a press release on Wednesday.
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st December, 2022) Controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, have lost all contact with the Mars InSight lander after four years of successful operations, NASA announced in a press release on Wednesday.
"NASA's InSight mission has ended after more than four years of collecting unique science on Mars," the release said. "Mission controllers at JPL in Southern California were unable to contact the lander after two consecutive attempts."
The mission controllers have now concluded that the spacecraft's solar-powered batteries have run out of energy - a condition that engineers on the project refer to as "dead bus," the release said.
"The agency will continue to listen for a signal from the lander, just in case, but hearing from it at this point is considered unlikely. The last time InSight communicated with Earth was December 15," the release added.
InSight, also called Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, successfully studied the interior layers of Mars and it discovered surprisingly strong remnants of the planet's magnetic dynamo, monitored weather patterns and 1,319 marsquakes, according to the release.
