Mars lander InSight seems to have sent its last photo

It looks like NASA’s Mars lander InSight has sent its latest image. The US space agency reported in May that InSight would cease to function before the end of this year because it cannot generate enough energy from its solar panels.

NASA has via Twitter shared the last photo of the Mars lander. The organization remains in contact with InSight as long as it still has sufficient energy. It is not clear when exactly the Mars lander will fail.

Earlier this year NASA reported that InSight would probably fail before the end of this year, because the solar panels that the Mars lander is equipped with become increasingly covered with dust. In recent months, the amount of electricity generated by this has decreased significantly. In October, Insight helped to find the source of an earthquake, which turned out to be from a meteorite impact. At the time, NASA expected that the Mars lander would be permanently taken out of use within six weeks.

InSight’s mission started in 2018. InSight was then sent to Mars for soil research. The planned mission was completed in 2020 and extended to 2022. InSight had detected a total of 1318 Martian quakes by October 2022.

The presumably last photo of Mars lander InSight