A NASA spacecraft on Mars is headed for a dusty demise.
FILE - This Dec. 6, 2018 image made available by NASA shows the InSight lander. The scene was assembled from 11 photos taken using its robotic arm. The spacecraft is losing power because of all the dust that's accumulated on its solar panels. NASA said Tuesday, May 17, 2022, it will keep using the spacecraft's seismometer to detect marsquakes until its power peters out. Officials expect operations to cease in July, almost four years after InSight's arrival at Mars.
Since landing on Mars in 2018, InSight has detected more than 1,300 marsquakes; the biggest one, a magnitude 5, occurred two weeks ago. NASA's two other functioning spacecraft on the Martian surface — rovers Curiosity and Perseverance — are still going strong thanks to nuclear power. The space agency may rethink solar power in the future for Mars, said planetary science director Lori Glaze, or at least experiment with new panel-clearing tech or aim for the less-stormy seasons.InSight currently is generating one-tenth of the power from the sun that it did upon arrival.
“None of them have quite hit us dead-on yet enough to blow the dust off the panels," Banerdt told reporters.
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