InSight lander

What was the InSight lander?

InSight was a NASA landerLanderA lander touches down on Mars and works from one spot, unlike a rover, which drives.More in the glossary built to study the deep inside of Mars rather than its surface.[1] Its name is short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport.[14] It carried three main experiments:[2][14][16]

• SEIS, a seismometer from France’s space agency, CNES, to listen for marsquakes.
• HP3, a heat probe from the German Aerospace Center (DLR), meant to hammer itself 5 m (16 ft) into the ground.
• RISE, which used the lander’s radio to track how Mars wobbles as it spins.

Lockheed Martin built InSight on the design of NASA’s Phoenix lander. Its 1.8 m (5.9 ft) robot arm lifted the instruments off the deck and set them on the ground.[1][14]

InSight launched on May 5, 2018, on an Atlas V rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, the first interplanetary launch from the US West Coast.[3] After a trip of about 485 million km (300 million mi), it landed on Nov 26, 2018, at 19:52 UTC.[2][4] Two briefcase-sized CubeSats called MarCO, the first sent into deep space, flew past Mars and relayed news of the landing.[1][4] The site, a flat, smooth plain in western Elysium Planitia, was chosen for safety, not scenery: what mattered was underground.[1]

How many marsquakes did InSight detect?

1,319, NASA says.[14] Its seismometer, set on the ground on Dec 19, 2018, was the first a spacecraft had placed on the surface of another planet.[5] It heard its first likely marsquake on Apr 6, 2019, its 128th solSolA sol is a day on Mars — 24 h 39 min 35 s, about 40 minutes longer than ours — and rovers count them from the day they land.More in the glossary.[6] Mars has no tectonic plates. Most marsquakes happen on faults in the crust, which crack under stress as the planet slowly cools and shrinks; others are set off by meteoroid impacts.[6][14][15]

Figures as NASA gives them; the biggest quake’s magnitude from the science team’s published analysis.[2][8][11][13][14][20]

The biggest quake, on May 4, 2022, was first estimated at magnitudeMagnitudeMagnitude is how bright something looks from Earth, on a scale where a lower number means brighter: a magnitude 1 star looks 100 times brighter than one of magnitude 6.More in the glossary 5.[10] The team’s later analysis put it at 4.7, with five times the seismic moment of the next-largest.[11] Searches by orbiters found no fresh crater, so a 2023 study concluded it was most likely tectonic, not an impact.[12] In 2021, NASA said InSight’s most significant quakes seemed to come from one region, Cerberus Fossae, where lava may have flowed within the last few million years.[7] The biggest one did not: it came from outside that region.[11]

What did InSight learn about the inside of Mars?

It measured the depth of Mars’s crust, mantle and core for the first time, and confirmed the core is at least partly molten.[7] A 2025 study of InSight’s quake data, published in Nature, reported a solid inner core about 600 km (370 mi) in radius at the center.[21] Each layer bends and reflects seismic waves differently, so a single seismometer could map them by listening for echoes.[7]

The 2023 core results came from seismic waves of two 2021 quakes that passed through the core, the first direct observations of another planet’s core, NASA says.[7][15][16][19]

InSight also found that rocks below the surface still hold surprisingly strong traces of Mars’s long-dead magnetic field.[14] Scientists are still mining its data: the lumpy mantle was reported in August 2025, almost three years after the lander fell silent.[19]

Did InSight hear meteoroids hit Mars?

Yes. In 2022 scientists confirmed four impacts from 2020 and 2021, 85 to 290 km (53 to 180 mi) from the lander. It was the first time seismic and sound waves from an impact had been detected on Mars.[9] The first confirmed, on Sep 5, 2021, broke into at least three pieces that each left a crater.[9]

The biggest came on Dec 24, 2021. InSight recorded a magnitude 4 quake. Orbiter images later showed its cause: a meteoroid 5 to 12 m (16 to 39 ft) across had hit Amazonis Planitia, leaving a crater about 150 m (490 ft) wide. It threw out boulder-size chunks of ice, closer to the equator than ice had ever been found on Mars.[13] In 2025, a crater matched to a quake in Cerberus Fossae, 1,640 km (1,019 mi) from InSight, showed that impact shaking can travel deep through the mantle.[18]

Why couldn’t InSight’s heat probe dig?

The soil clumped. The probe, a 40 cm (16 in) self-hammering spike called “the mole,” was designed for loose, sandy soil and needed friction to drive itself 5 m (16 ft) down.[8][14] It started hammering on Feb 28, 2019. For almost two years the team used the robot arm to press on it and scrape soil onto it. After 500 more hammer strokes on Jan 9, 2021 made no progress, they stopped, with the top of the mole about 2 to 3 cm (1 in) under the surface.[8] It still returned useful data on the soil’s physical and thermal properties.[14]

What happened to the InSight lander?

Dust settled on its solar panels until there was no longer enough power to run it.[14]

1. As power fellThe team used the arm to trickle sand onto the panels on windy days; the falling grains swept some dust off.[14]
2. Apr 24, 2022 · sol 1,211InSight’s last selfie shows it far dustier than in its first, from December 2018.[14]
3. May 7, 2022Its power fell below the level that triggers safe mode, three days after its biggest quake.[10]
4. October 2022A regional dust storm had cut its power further. NASA said it expected the lander to shut down within six weeks.[13]
5. Dec 15, 2022 · sol 1,440Last contact with Earth. The seismometer was the last science instrument still switched on.[14][20]
6. Dec 21, 2022After the lander missed two contacts in a row, NASA declared the mission over.[14]
7. Dec 16, 2024NASA said it would stop listening for InSight at the end of 2024, after two years with no sign that wind had cleared its panels. An orbiter photo from Oct 23, 2024 shows them the same reddish brown as the ground.[17]

Mission timeline

1. May 5, 2018Launches from Vandenberg, California, on an Atlas V.[3]
2. Nov 26, 2018Lands in Elysium Planitia.[4]
3. Dec 19, 2018Sets its seismometer on the ground.[5]
4. Feb 28, 2019The mole starts hammering.[8]
5. Apr 6, 2019Records its first likely marsquake.[6]
6. Nov 24, 2020Prime mission ends; NASA extends it to December 2022.[2][8]
7. Jan 9, 2021Last attempt to bury the mole.[8]
8. Jul 22, 2021Three papers in Science map the crust, mantle and core.[7]
9. Dec 24, 2021Feels a meteoroid impact that exposes buried ice.[13]
10. May 4, 2022Records its biggest quake, magnitude 4.7.[10][11]
11. Dec 15, 2022Last contact.[14]
12. Dec 21, 2022NASA ends the mission.[14]

Sources

1. NASA Science — InSight LanderPrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
2. NASA NSSDCA — InSight Mars Lander (2018-042A)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
3. NASA JPL — NASA, ULA Launch Mission to Study How Mars Was MadePrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
4. NASA — NASA InSight Lander Arrives on Martian Surface to Learn What Lies BeneathPrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
5. NASA JPL — NASA’s InSight Places First Instrument on MarsPrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
6. NASA JPL — NASA’s InSight Detects First Likely ‘Quake’ on MarsPrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
7. NASA JPL — NASA’s InSight Reveals the Deep Interior of MarsPrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
8. NASA JPL — NASA InSight’s ‘Mole’ Ends Its Journey on MarsPrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
9. NASA JPL — NASA’s InSight ‘Hears’ Its First Meteoroid Impacts on MarsPrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
10. NASA JPL — NASA’s InSight Records Monster Quake on MarsPrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
11. Geophysical Research Letters — S1222a — The Largest Marsquake Detected by InSight (Kawamura et al., 2023)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
12. Geophysical Research Letters — A Tectonic Origin for the Largest Marsquake Observed by InSight (Fernando et al., 2023)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
13. NASA JPL — NASA’s InSight Lander Detects Stunning Meteoroid Impact on MarsPrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
14. NASA — NASA Retires InSight Mars Lander Mission After Years of SciencePrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
15. NASA — NASA InSight Study Provides Clearest Look Ever at Martian CorePrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
16. NASA JPL — NASA InSight Study Finds Mars Is Spinning FasterPrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
17. NASA — NASA Mars Orbiter Spots Retired InSight Lander to Study Dust MovementPrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
18. NASA — NASA’s InSight Finds Marsquakes From Meteoroids Go Deeper Than ExpectedPrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
19. NASA — NASA Marsquake Data Reveals Lumpy Nature of Red Planet’s InteriorPrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
20. NASA GISS — Mars24 Sunclock — Mars LandersPrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
21. Nature — Seismic detection of a 600-km solid inner core in Mars (Bi et al., 2025)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026