CAPE CANAVER, Florida –
A NASA spacecraft on Mars is heading for dusty death.
The Insight lander loses power due to all the dust on its solar panels. NASA said Tuesday it would continue to use the spacecraft’s seismometer to record earthquakes until the power goes out, possibly in July. Flight controllers will then monitor InSight until the end of this year, before canceling everything.
“There really wasn’t too much doom and gloom on the team. We’re really still focused on managing the spacecraft,” said Bruce Banerd of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, chief scientist.
Since landing on Mars in 2018, InSight has detected more than 1,300 earthquakes; the largest, with a magnitude of 5, occurred two weeks ago.
This will be NASA’s second spacecraft on Mars lost in dust: a global dust storm destroyed Opportunity in 2018. In the case of InSight, it was a gradual collection of dust, especially in the last year.
The other two NASA spacecraft operating on the Martian surface – the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers – are still working well thanks to nuclear energy. The space agency could rethink solar energy in the future for Mars, said Planetary Science Director Lori Glaze, or at least experiment with new panel cleaning technology or aim for less turbulent seasons.
InSight currently generates one-tenth of the sun’s energy as it arrives. Deputy Project Manager Katya Zamora Garcia said the lander initially had enough power to operate an electric oven for one hour and 40 minutes; it is now up to 10 minutes maximum.
The InSight team expected so much dust to accumulate, but hoped that a gust of wind or a dust devil could clean the solar panels. This has not yet happened, although several thousand vortices are approaching.
“None of them hit us completely, but still enough to blow the dust off the panels,” Banerd told reporters.
Another scientific instrument, called the mole, had to bury 16 feet (5 meters) underground to measure the internal temperature of Mars. But the German excavator never reached more than a few feet (half a meter) due to the unexpected composition of the red dirt, and was finally pronounced dead early last year.
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