[U] It Would Seem The Insight Barsoomian Lander Has Reached "End of Mission" Status. No Response -- To Any Ping.

Well, for almost five long years, we have enjoyed following the ups and downs of this mission, on Mars.

We enjoyed the science puzzler, of figuring out why the hammer/drill was just bouncing about (rather than making progress, at drill depths), in the soft slushy "mosh pit" of the regolith. We sat slack-jawed, at the wonder of watching Mars-quakes reverberate around the smaller globe there. . . and ultimately, meet its end -- as micro-layers of copper-hued dust settled year after year on it, occluding its solar panels, and thus draining its power source. Here is JPL on it all:

. . .As of Nov. 29, 2022, InSight was generating an average between 290 watt-hours of energy per Martian day, or sol. The tau, or level of dust cover in the atmosphere, was estimated at .95 (typical tau levels outside of dust season range from 0.6-0.7). . . .

As of Dec. 12, 2022, InSight was generating an average of ~285 watt-hours of energy per Martian day, or sol. The tau, or level of dust cover in the atmosphere, was estimated at .96 (typical tau levels outside of dust season range from 0.6-0.7). . . .

On Dec. 18, 2022, NASA’s InSight did not respond to communications from Earth. The lander’s power has been declining for months, as expected, and it’s assumed InSight may have reached its end of operations. It’s unknown what prompted the change in its energy; the last time the mission contacted the spacecraft was on Dec. 15, 2022. The team members at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California were unable to contact the lander after two consecutive attempts, leading them to conclude the spacecraft’s solar-powered batteries have run out of energy -- a state engineers refer to as “dead bus”. . . .

The mission will continue to try and contact InSight. . . .

It was a fine mission, overall -- with great new data -- scads of it, in fact -- on Marsquakes. It matters little that the "mining" portion of the mission mistook harder rock for... a "Dippin' Dots" sort of ice cream pebbles regolith, and thus could not gain traction -- as in a ball pit, at McD's of yester-year. The mission was a full on, bangin' success! Here's to a fine new year. . . onward, into the warm afternoon mountain bike rides. Then to Sky Harbor to get more scattered family collected into the copper colored Adobe-clad homes we keep down here. . . . Smile. It is almost. . . celebration time!

नमस्ते