Nasa officially declares Mars ‘InSight’ lander dead after it disappears

Nasa has officially declared its ‘InSight’ lander dead, after it stopped communicating with Earth.

The lander has been collecting information on the red planet for more than four years.

But its engineers have failed to hear from it twice, and now believe that it has run out of energy.

Mission controllers refer to such a state – when the solar-powered batteries have run out of power – as a “dead bus”.

In recent days, Nasa had shared the last image expected to arrive from the InSight lander, and an indication that its power was running out.

The InSight lander has not made contact with Earth since 15 December. Scientists had previously decided that after successive failed attempts they would retire the mission.

But in recent days the spacecraft that flies over Mars and relays InSight’s data back to Earth has now flown past the lander twice, and the mission is retired.

Nasa will keep listening out for a signal from the lander, “just in case”. But it does not expect to hear from it, and so the mission is considered over.

“I watched the launch and landing of this mission, and while saying goodbye to a spacecraft is always sad, the fascinating science InSight conducted is cause for celebration,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

“The seismic data alone from this Discovery Program mission offers tremendous insights not just into Mars but other rocky bodies, including Earth.”

The lander – named Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport or InSight for short – was dropped onto Mars in November 2018. It has been active ever since.

InSight is unusual in that it looks to measure the inside of the planet: it has a seismometer and heat probe that together look to understand the Martian geology and interior.