With Dusty Solar Panels, InSight’s Days on Mars Are Numbered

Dust has always been the biggest problem with InSight's solar panels, which are shaped like a decagonal (10-sided) pie. Raymond Arvidson, a planetary scientist at Washington University in St. Louis and a member of the Mars Science Laboratory, says dust storms emerge more often during the summer. The solar array started off black, but now is almost completely dusty auburn. This has limited the lander's power and life expectancy.

A large dust storm in January prevented sunlight from reaching the panels. The lander was put into safe mode because of the reduced power supply, suspending all but the most essential functions until about 12 days later. With a lander, you can tilt the panels, but with a rover, you can't. Both of them are powered by plutonium, unlike their predecessors, which were solar-powered.

They had enough dust devils nearby that actually cleaned the solar panels and allowed those missions to go a long time. InSight has not been so lucky.

Arvidson agrees that dust isn't our friend.

In May 2021, the InSight team successfully tried a new dust-removal technique, using the lander's robotic arm to trickle some grains of sand onto a solar panel. The trick isn't enough to save the lander this time, as it only brought back a few hundred watt-hours of energy last year. The scientists think there is only a small chance of a windstorm clearing enough dust to allow the landers to land.

There will be a lot of technology development, thinking of clever ways to keep solar panels as clear as we can. The director of NASA said that they could send the lander during a season that was less dusty. The design of the seismometer for the Dragonfly will be influenced by the instrument on InSight.

While all space missions have limited lifespans, those who work on them for years, and fans who follow their development and findings, grow attached to these spacefaring machines. If the wind blows just right, InSight could awaken and send signals back home after the lander shuts down. In case, Banerdt and his colleagues will be listening. They are mourning as they anticipate that InSight will end. This lander has done everything we asked of it. It feels like part of the family to me. I don't know what it will be like when I wake up and there isn't anything in my email to let me know what's happening in Mars. It will leave a hole in my life.