This may be the last image sent back by NASA’s Mars InSight spacecraft.
After a four-year mission on the red planet, the robotic lander – which is famous for taking the first “selfie” ever taken on Mars – is shutting down.
Thick wind-blown dust has covered InSight’s solar panels, with NASA expecting to soon lose contact with the probe.
The US space agency posted the news on the craft’s Twitter page, saying: “My power is really low so this may be the last image I can send.
“Don’t worry about me, though: my time here has been productive and peaceful.
“If I can continue to talk to my mission team, I will – but I’ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for sticking with me.”
NASA announced the £630 million InSight project 10 years ago as a follow-up to the successful Curiosity rover.
The goal of the InSight lander was to find out how Mars formed, with the goal of giving scientists a better understanding of how rocky bodies like Earth were created.
Previously, the spacecraft had to successfully make the 300 million mile journey to Mars before enduring “seven minutes of terror” to descend to the surface.
Only 40% of missions to the red planet have passed safely through the thin atmosphere.
Image: Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
A combination of heat shield, parachute and retrorockets helped slow InSight from 13,000 mph to 5 mph in just six minutes to allow it to land on Elysium Planitia, a featureless plain just north of the Curiosity rover’s location.
Once deployed, the probe inserted a temperature probe five meters into the surface to measure the heat escaping from the planet’s core.
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Five months after landing, InSight’s earthquake monitor registered a faint rumble. NASA scientists concluded that it came from inside the planet, calling it a “marine earthquake.”
One of InSight’s major achievements was establishing that the red planet is indeed seismically active, recording more than 1,300 earthquakes.
Image: NASA’s robotic lander, InSight. Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
The record ushered in a new research field of “Martian seismology,” NASA said, which could help understand more about how rocky planets formed.
It also measures seismic waves generated by meteorites, revealing the thickness of the planet’s outer crust, the size and density of the inner core, and the structure of the mantle that lies between them.
But there was also time for a little fun. The craft captured the first-ever “selfie” taken on Mars, using a camera attached to its robotic arm to beam a photo all the way back to Earth.
Image: InSight takes a ‘selfie’ on the surface of Mars using a camera on its robotic arm.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles will continue to listen for a signal from the lander, just in case.
But we’re unlikely to hear from InSight again, experts say.
The three-legged stationary probe last communicated with Earth on December 15.
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