— NASA InSight (@NASAInSight) December 19, 2022 This was followed by a Tweet from the NASA JPL Twitter handle that reported that on December 18, the InSight Mars Lander “did not respond to communications from Earth.”
— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) December 20, 2022 NASA’s Mars Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission launched on May 5, 2018, from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. After a 300-million-mile journey to Mars, InSIght touched down on the Red Planet near the equator on the western side of a flat, smooth expanse of lava called Elysium Planitia on November 26. The mission’s science goals were to uncover how a rocky body forms and evolves to become a planet by investigating the interior structure and composition of Mars and to determine the rate of Martian tectonic activity and meteorite impacts. InSIght achieved its primary science goals in its first Martian year (~2 Earth years), and NASA extended its mission to focus on producing a long-duration, high-quality seismic dataset. During its time on Mars, InSight’s seismometer felt multiple meteor impacts, detected more than 1,300 marsquakes, and shed new light on the Red Planet’s interior:
InSight Mars Lander Detects Stunning Meteoroid Impact on Red PlanetListen to Space Rocks Crash Into MarsSubsurface Water On Mars Defies ExpectationsNASA’s InSight Records Monster Quake on MarsInsight Lander Uses Wind-Induced Vibrations To Reveal the Red Planet’s Subsurface LayersInSight Mars Lander Detects Three Big MarsquakesInterior of Mars Revealed by InSight’s Seismic ObservationsMore Than 500 Marsquakes Detected by InSight Lander in First YearInSight Detects Two Sizable Quakes on MarsInSight Takes Deep Mars Measurements: Reveals Boundaries From Crust to CoreMysterious Magnetic Pulsations Detected at Martian Surface Around MidnightEerie Sounds on Mars Picked Up by NASA’s InSight Lander
