Discover the lonely fate of a robot on Mars
May 20, 2022
Covered in the red dust that sealed its fate, NASA's InSight lander is slowly shutting down, more than 250 million kilometres from home.
With its solar panels now obscured by the planet’s debris, the four-year-old robot is running out of power. One by one, its instruments are being taken offline: its robotic arm moving into ‘retirement pose’, and its seismometer likely to be turned off sometime in June.
Dr. Catherine Johnson, professor with the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, and co-investigator on NASA’s InSight science team, discusses what her team discovered, what questions are left to answer about the robot, and what its future could look like.
- Research
- Media release