The end of NASA's Mars lander is in sight.
The solar panels on the spacecraft are difficult to charge because of the dust on Mars.
Insight's science operations are coming to a close later this summer, according to a Tuesday update from NASA. They say that the lander will become inoperative by December.
It is the unfortunate end to a successful scientific mission. According to the space agency, the lander has been able to detect more than 1,300 marsquakes.
The director of NASA's Planetary Science Division said that InSight has transformed our understanding of the interiors of rocky planets and set the stage for future missions.
Scientists have been given unprecedented data that peers into the deep interior of Mars, along with recording weather data on the Red Planet's surface, thanks to the minivan-sized craft that landed on Mars in November.
A notable failure of the mission was the saga of the landers trying to bury its hammer drill-like temperature probe into the Red Planet's surface. The mole instrument team at the GermanAerospace Center called it quits last year.
The team was able to remove the dust from the solar panels by using the robotic arm to push sand onto the panels.
The team was hoping that the weather events would clear the panels.
Bruce Banerdt, InSight's principal investigator, said in the statement that they have been hoping for a dust cleaning to happen.
It is a sad situation. It is simply not possible for 25 percent of the panels to provide enough power to keep scientific operation going.
By December, the team is expecting to receive the last signs of life from InSight, a piece of machinery that managed to land on a distant planet.
NASA is still hunting Marsquakes as power levels decline.
NASA's Mars mole is giving up.
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