Martian Dust Storm Sends NASA’s InSight Lander Into Safe Mode

The NASA InSight Lander was pressured to enter secure mode final Friday as a Martian mud storm swept over its location. The ongoing storm has diminished the quantity of daylight hitting the lander’s photo voltaic panels, so mission controllers have diminished its exercise to the naked minimum to cut back pressure on the batteries.

Contact was reestablished with InSight on Monday, and the probe’s group discovered that the craft was in steady situation. The same storm ended the Opportunity rover mission, because the rover’s batteries drained and NASA couldn’t get again in contact with the craft.

The InSight mission has yielded essential science because it landed on Mars in 2018, together with a number of papers printed final July that described the Martian inside, from its crust to its core. But the probe’s tenure has been crammed with frustration, too, after the failure of its “mole” gadget that was meant to be a serious a part of the mission. Dust has additionally been a difficulty: In June 2021, the quantity of mud that had collected on the probe’s photo voltaic panels threatened the complete mission. NASA engineers had been pressured to MacGyver an answer, commanding the probe to drop bits of dust onto the panels in an effort to dislodge the mud.

Unfortunately, the facility wanted to do these dust-clearing maneuvers grow to be harder to tug off because the lander’s obtainable vitality is depleted, a NASA release this week defined. The group believes that the lander can exit secure mode subsequent week (climate dependent), which is able to give them extra flexibility in how they command the probe.

The InSight mission is deliberate to final via December 2022. If earlier shut calls are any information, the lander could emerge unscathed from the newest mud debacle. 

More: Martian Dust Could End NASA’s InSight Mission in a Matter of Months