‘My power is really low’: NASA set to lose contact with Mars InSight spacecraft after four years
This may be the last ever image sent from NASA’s Mars InSight spacecraft.
After a four-year mission on the red planet, the robotic lander – which famously snapped the first “selfie” ever taken on Mars – is powering down.
Thick windblown dust has covered InSight’s solar panels, with NASA expecting to lose contact with the probe soon.
The American space agency posted the news on the craft’s Twitter page, saying: “My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send.
“Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene.
“If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will – but I’ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me.”
NASA announced the £630m InSight project 10 years ago as a follow-up to its successful Curiosity rover.
The InSight lander’s goal was to discover how Mars was formed, with the aim of giving scientists a better understanding of how rocky bodies like the Earth were created.
Before that, the spacecraft had to successfully make the 300 million-mile journey to Mars before enduring “seven minutes of terror” to descend to the surface.
Just 40% of missions to the red planet have safely made it through the thin atmosphere.
Pic: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
A combination of a heatshield, parachute and retrorockets helped slow InSight from 13,000mph to 5mph in just six minutes to allow it to land on the Elysium Planitia, a featureless plain just north of the location of the Curiosity rover.
Once it unfurled, the craft rammed a temperature probe five metres into the surface to measure the heat flowing from the planet’s core.
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Five months after landing, InSight’s quake monitor recorded a faint rumbling. NASA’s scientists concluded that it came from within the planet, dubbing it a “Marsquake”.
One of InSight’s chief accomplishments was establishing that the red planet is, indeed, seismically active, recording more than 1,300 marsquakes.
NASA’s robotic lander, InSight. Pic: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
The recording kicked off a new research field of “Martian seismology”, NASA said, which could help find out more about how rocky planets were formed.
It also measured seismic waves generated by meteorite impacts, revealed the thickness of the planet’s outer crust, the size and density of its inner core and the structure of the mantle that lies in between.
But there was also time for some fun. The craft famously snapped the first ever “selfie” taken on Mars, using a camera attached to its robotic arm to beam a photo all the way back to Earth.
InSight takes a ‘selfie’ on the surface of Mars using a camera on its robotic arm.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles will continue to listen for a signal from the lander, just in case.
But hearing from InSight again is unlikely, experts say.
The three-legged stationary probe last communicated with Earth on 15 December.
Elon Musk could be on track for a $1trn pay packet.
Tesla shareholders have approved the whopping financial package for the CEO – who’s already worth an estimated $491bn – if he hits a series of ambitious targets over the next 10 years.
But that $1trn figure (or £761,910,000,000) – which is both one thousand billion and one million million – is almost impossible to imagine for most people.
Even so, we have drilled down into the numbers and examined what you can do with a trillion US dollars – and it turns out, quite a lot.
Show me the money
Laid end to end, a trillion one-dollar bills would cover a distance of approximately 156 billion metres.
That could wrap around the equator 3,890 times, easily reach the sun from Earth (around 149.6 million km) or loop from Earth to the moon 405 times.
That many one-dollar notes could cover a massive area (roughly 10,339 km squared), meaning you could blanket nearly all of Lebanon or Jamaica in bills.
Spend it on sport
You could splash out on virtually all of the world’s major sporting leagues.
The clubs which make up the Premier League are relatively cheap ($30bn), and even when snapping up the UEFA Champions League clubs and the big five top divisions of Spain, Italy, Germany, and France, there’s still $858bn left in the kitty.
The four major US sports leagues for ice hockey, baseball, basketball, and American football (NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL) have a rough valuation of $544bn, according to Sportico.
But then add the IPL cricket league ($120bn) and F1 ($23.1bn) and Musk still has change from an estimated total spend of $829.7bn.
Elon Musk is in the money if he hits targets set by Tesla’s shareholders. File pic: AP
Take over Tesla’s rivals
He could buy up the top 15 largest publicly traded automakers (excluding Tesla) by market capitalisation.
They would include firms like Japan’s Toyota ($275bn), Chinese automaker BYD ($120bn), and luxury brands like Ferrari ($81bn) and Mercedes-Benz ($62bn), as well as BMW ($52bn), Volkswagen ($50bn) and Ford ($48bn).
But there would still be a little change left over; the total bill would be an eye-watering $992bn.
Buy up San Diego
He could buy up every single residential property in San Diego County – valued at a total of $1trn. Seattle is just slightly out of reach at $1.1trn, according to recent data from real estate firm Zillow.
But if he wanted to buy big – there is always Tennessee. The total value of homes in the US state is estimated at $957bn. Or there is Maryland, which at $1.01trn could be bought if he can find a little more cash behind the sofa.
Sadly, he would struggle to scoop up London’s entire housing stock, which in February was valued at just under £2trn ($2.53trn), according to agents Savills.
Cities like New York ($4.6trn) and Los Angeles ($3.9trn) are also not within his budget, hosting America’s most expensive residential markets.
Do something charitable?
There is always the possibility Musk could follow in the footsteps of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who intends to give away 99% of his vast fortune over the next 20 years.
He could give every single man, woman, and child in the US a share of his cash pile. They would receive approximately $2,917.32 (£2,223.29), based on a population estimate of 342.7 million.
Although it would be roughly $14,348.79 (£10,935.20) for every person (roughly 69.6 million) in the UK.
If he wanted to give the entire globe an early Christmas present, then based on the rough world population estimate of 8.2 billion, everyone would receive $121.80 (£92.87).
Pay off the credit card
With $1trn, he could instantly rewrite history and erase debt interest payments and the government debt from dozens of the world’s sovereign nations.
Or Musk could wipe out the debts of Singapore ($1trn) or South Korea ($0.99trn) in one go, according to figures from the International Monetary Fund’s latest World Economic Outlook (Oct 2025).
But when it comes to the biggest debt-laden countries, $1trn would not even touch the sides.
The US has $38.3trn of government debt (just over one third of the total global debt pile) while the UK has a modest $4.1trn.
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