The InSight Mars mission was officially terminated by NASA on Wednesday following two consecutively unsuccessful attempts to re-establish contact. The lander sent its last transmission to Earth on December 15. Following two failed communication efforts earlier this year, NASA declared it will make the difficult decision to declare the mission a failure. Although the agency adds the odds of that happening at this stage are “considered improbable,” it will nevertheless keep listening for a signal “just in case.”

When NASA sent the lander’s final selfie, which was shot on April 24, 2022, to Twitter on Monday, it announced that InSight would soon be destroyed. InSight’s solar panels have slowly gathered dust since it landed on the surface of Mars in 2018. NASA anticipated the debris would get too dense for the lander to operate on its own power earlier this year.

When NASA claims that InSight’s time on Mars was productive, it is being modest. The lander, whose name is an acronym for Interior Exploration utilising Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport, has been gathering information on the planet’s deep interior for more than four years. InSight’s highly sensitive seismometer identified 1,319 “marsquakes,” at least one of which was brought on by a meteoroid impact. NASA scientists came to the conclusion that the core of Mars is around half the size of the Earth’s. “My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send,” InSight’s final tweet reads. “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.”