NASA has shared a recent selfie taken by the terrifying InSight Mars that is about to retire soon because it is losing power due to dusty solar panels.
The final selfie was taken on April 24 and shows the landing completely covered in dust.
“A dusty self-portrait,” InSight’s NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a tweet.
“@NASAInSight took what is likely to be his last selfie on April 24,” he added.
The tweet also added a GIF, showing the first selfie of the spacecraft made in December 2018 and the last “where it is covered in Martian dust.”
Last week, NASA had shared that InSight was gradually losing power and “is expected to end scientific operations by the end of the summer.”
“In December, the InSight team expects the landing to become inoperative and the mission to be completed,” NASA said in a statement.
InSight (short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport), which landed on Mars on November 26, 2018, was initially designed for almost two Earth years. Then the mission expanded and its solar panels have been producing less energy as they continue to accumulate dust.
The solar panels of the lander, each 2.2 meters wide, produce about one-tenth of its 5,000-watt-hour landing capacity, NASA said.
In addition, over the next few months, there will be more dust in the air, reducing sunlight and frightening energy. Priority is being given to the seismometer of the lander, which will operate at certain times of the day, such as at night, when the winds are low and earthquakes are easier to hear with the seismometer.
The seismometer is expected to be shut down by the end of the summer, concluding the scientific phase of the mission.
At this point, the scare will still have enough power to operate, taking some occasional pictures and communicating with the Earth. But the team expects that around December, “the power will be low enough that one day InSight will simply stop responding.”
With his latest selfie, the mission team will soon put the robotic arm of the lander in its rest position (called a “retirement pose”) for the last time this month.
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