InSight

The InSight Mars lander will cease science operations sometime in the next few months due to a decreasing power supply, mission managers said at a news conference on May 17.Martian dust covering the solar panels has reduced the amount of power to roughly 500 watt-hours per Mars day or sol. When InSight landed in November of 2018, the solar panels produced around 5,000 watt-hours each sol.  "At the end of the calendar year, we do anticipate having to conclude all InSight operations," said Kathya Zamora Garcia, InSight's…

Time is running out for one of NASA’s spacecraft. The InSight Mars lander is dying, and NASA doesn’t have any big plans to keep it alive. To be fair, the lander has been on the outs for a number of months now. That’s because the dust that Mars’ various storms kick up has been gathering on the lander’s solar panels. The InSight Mars lander is dying Dust covers the solar panels on NASA’s InSight Mars lander, which has kept it from properly recharging its batteries. Image source: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA’s…

Illustration of NASA’s Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) Credit: NASADusty solar panels and darker skies are expected to bring the <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>Mars</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>Mars is the second smallest planet in our solar system and the fourth planet from the sun. Iron oxide is prevalent in Mars' surface resulting in its reddish…

A NASA spacecraft on Mars is headed for a dusty demise.The Insight lander is losing power because of all the dust on its solar panels. NASA said Tuesday it will keep using the spacecraft's seismometer to register marsquakes until the power peters out, likely in July. Then flight controllers will monitor InSight until the end of this year, before calling everything off.“There really hasn't been too much doom and gloom on the team. We're really still focused on operating the spacecraft,” said Jet Propulsion Laboratory's…

on May 17, 2022…

While InSight’s pair of solar panels, each one shaped like a decagonal (10-sided) pie, efficiently provide solar power to the lander, dust has always been its Achilles’ heel. While dust storms come by frequently—though not as intensely as portrayed in The Martian—they emerge more often during the summer, says Raymond Arvidson, a planetary scientist at Washington University in St. Louis and a member of the Mars Science Laboratory and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter teams. Over time, dust continually collected atop the flat,…

For Laura Bates, it began with a heavy piece of gold jewellery that her mother found on the passenger seat of the family car. It was a gift from her grandparents. Her mother, after two daughters, had been rewarded for giving birth to a son. “I am five years old,” Bates writes, “and have no idea I’ve already been weighed, valued and found wanting.”This incident is the first on what the feminist writer and activist calls “my list”. She encourages all women to make one, charting a life in sexism, from the playground to the…

In terms of seismic events on the red planet (or indeed any other planet besides Earth), this is the biggest one recorded so far: the NASA InSight lander has recorded a 'monster' of a marsquake, which is estimated to have hit magnitude 5 on the scale used on Earth.  That beats the previous record holder, a magnitude-4.2 marsquake that Insight recorded back on 25 August 2021. The new quake happened on Mars on May 4 of this year, the 1,222nd sol (or Martian day) of the lander's mission.A magnitude-5 quake on Earth would be…

NASA’s beleaguered InSight lander on Mars has detected a magnitude 5 “marsquake” — the largest one the spacecraft has felt yet since landing on the planet in November of 2018. It’s a major moment that comes during a fraught time for InSight, as the spacecraft’s solar panels continue to gather dust that will eventually bring an end to the vehicle’s life on Mars. InSight’s mission on the Red Planet has been to probe the interior of Mars, primarily by sensing for tremors from the surface. Unlike quakes here on Earth,…

An artist illustration of the InSight lander on Mars. InSight, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is designed to give the Red Planet its first thorough checkup since it formed 4.5 billion years ago. Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechEstimated to be magnitude 5, the quake is the strongest ever detected on another planet.NASA’s InSight Mars lander has detected the largest quake ever observed on another planet: an estimated magnitude 5 temblor that occurred on May 4, 2022, the…