By now, it's a familiar view of Mars: A distant horizon strewn with rocks while, up close, a domed seismometer, a robotic arm and other instruments sit covered in red dust. But this photo from NASA's InSight Mars lander just might be its last.
"My power's really low, so this may be the last image I can send," NASA wrote as the InSight lander while sharing the image on Twitter Monday (Dec. 19). "Don't worry about me, though: my time here has been both productive and serene."
In a blog post on Dec. 19, NASA announced that InSight failed to respond to communications from Earth and it's assumed the Mars lander may have reached the end of its operations.
For months the lander has been starved of power as its solar arrays get increasingly caked with Martian dust.
Related: NASA's InSight Mars lander: 10 surprising facts
NASA launched the Mars lander InSight (its name is short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) in May 2018, with the lander touching down on Mars in the plains of the Elysium Planitia in November of that year.
InSight's mission was ambitious: To understand the interior of Mars like never before by using a seismometer to measure marsquakes and burrow a heat probe (nicknamed the "mole") beneath the Martian surface. The heat probe, however, was never able to get deep enough to meet its goals.
Still, InSight succeeded in tracking marsquakes, with scientists even this week announcing it detected its biggest quake on Mars ever. InSight has detected more than 1,300 marsquakes since it landed in 2018.
Yet over the last four years, dust has built up on the lander's large, round solar arrays, limiting the amount of power InSight could generate over time. InSight completed its primary two-year mission in 2020, with NASA granting an extension through December 2022 if the lander could live that long. The lander is now generating just 20% of the power it had after landing.
Last month, NASA gave the InSight lander just weeks to live on Mars.
"If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will — but I'll be signing off here soon," InSight's Twitter post on Monday read. "Thanks for staying with me."
Editor's note: This story was updated on Dec. 20 to include information from a NASA blog post, regarding InSight's lack of response to communications.
Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Instagram.
