From its vantage point in space, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recently captured a glimpse of the inactive InSight lander. The new images serve not only as a final farewell to the lander, but also as a striking portrayal of the turbulent nature of dust storms on the Red Planet.
Although InSight officially retired in December 2022, engineers held on to a faint hope that the lander, which had fallen silent and entered a deep coma, might yet awaken. They believed there was a small chance that winds could blow some of the accumulated dust off its panels, allowing it to collect sunlight again and recharge its batteries.
However, no signals have been received. As 2024 draws to a close, NASA has confirmed that engineers will cease attempting to contact InSight.
“It feels a little bittersweet to look at InSight now. It was a successful mission that produced lots of great science,” said Ingrid Daubar, a planetary scientist at Brown University, in a statement. “Of course, it would have been nice if it kept going forever, but we knew that wouldn’t happen.”
Dust devils, known for churning up Martian dirt, have long posed a hazard to spacecraft on the surface. However, these whirlwinds can also help to clear dust from solar panels. Around 12 years ago, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured an extraordinary dust devil with a plume reaching 12 miles into the sky.
On Mars, dust devils form similarly to those on Earth, despite the much thinner atmosphere. They tend to occur on dry days when the ground heats up more than the surrounding air. Smaller than tornadoes, dust devils create funnel-shaped whirlwinds that channel warmer air upwards and around.
This spinning wind accelerates, much like an ice skater speeding up as they pull their arms in. On Mars, this results in distinctive tracks — straight lines, curves, and spirals — where the dust devil has travelled, picking up light dust that coats the planet and exposing the darker volcanic rock layers beneath.
Between 2018 and 2022, InSight studied over 1,000 marsquakes and collected daily weather data. It also detected Mars’ large liquid core and contributed to mapping the planet’s inner geology. NASA had long expected that the spacecraft would eventually become so covered in dust that it would no longer be able to generate power.
