Week 23, 2022: InSight Lander to End Four-Year-long Mission by December 2022

Final self-portrait image of InSight, taken on April 24, 2022

InSight will end its mission on Mars this year, after engineers calculated it would not produce sufficient power at the end of Martian summer due to intense covering of dust in its solar panels. It might come out as soon as July 2022, but if all things goes well, it will slowly power down each instrument one by one until it is finally decommissioned by December 2022.

The 12th mission of NASA's Discovery Program, InSight was launched in May 5, 2018 aboard an Atlas V rocket from Vandenberg AFB in California, USA (a first in planetary exploration history). Shortly after the global dust storm (that killed Opportunity) ended, the spacecraft landed on Elysium Planitia on November 26, 2018 and started its four-year mission to study the interior of the Red Planet

The InSight lander is available for download in the Spacecrafts category here

Source: DW

Newest Addons of the Fortnight

These are the newest and updated add-ons available for download starting last week (May 23 - June 5, 2022) by category

Asteroids & NEOs

I'm 33434 Scottmanley, "Fly Safe"!

Comets

The debris trail of Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 in February 2006

Exoplanets

Kepler-1708 b and its Neptune-sized satellite, the second such exomoon discovered

Fictional

View from one of the 550 planets orbiting around the supermassive black hole known as Cormoran

ArcBuilder Universe
Planets & Moons

The planets of the Solar System in their 1980s-style art concepts

Spacecraft

The five Space Shuttle orbiters (Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour). Take note that the payloads rendered are not yet available, but will be posted in future updates of this addon

Updates

Other news: What's new in Celestia 1.5.7

Open in Celestia