LOS ANGELES, Dec. 21 (XINHUA) — NASA’s InSight lander has completed its mission after more than four years of collecting unique scientific data on Mars, the agency announced Wednesday.
Mission controllers at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California were unable to contact the lander after two consecutive attempts, leading them to conclude that the solar rover’s batteries had run out, what engineers call a ” dead bus”.
And NASA had earlier decided to declare the mission over if it failed in two attempts to contact the lander.
Insight last made contact with Earth on December 15, according to NASA.
InSight was launched in May 2018 to study deep inside Mars. It landed safely on the Red Planet in late November 2018, marking NASA’s first landing on Mars since Curiosity in 2012.
The spacecraft has detected about 1,300 Martian earthquakes and made countless scientific discoveries over the past four years, according to the agency.
