Tag: InSight

Because a dust storm has caused a further decline in the power being generated by InSight’s solar panels, the science team has decided to put the lander into safe mode for the next two weeks in the hope that the air will then clear, allowing its power levels to rise.

The graph to the right shows that drop. From the press release:

By Monday, Oct. 3, the storm had grown large enough and was lofting so much dust that the thickness of the dusty haze in the Martian atmosphere had increased by nearly 40% around InSight. With less sunlight reaching the lander’s panels, its energy fell from 425 watt-hours per Martian day, or sol, to just 275 watt-hours per sol.

InSight’s seismometer has been operating for about 24 hours every other Martian day. But the drop in solar power does not leave enough energy to completely charge the batteries every sol. At the current rate of discharge, the lander would be able to operate only for several weeks. So to conserve energy, the mission will turn off InSight’s seismometer for the next two weeks.

The real problem however is the dust covering the solar panels. If that dust gets thicker due to this storm, the lander will not recover when they power it up in two weeks. It will still generate electricity at this low number, making future operations likely impossible.

The Energizer bunny of Mars, the InSight lander, continues to hold on. The engineering team tonight issued another status report, as shown in the graph to the right. For the past week the lander continued to produce 420 watt-hours per day, even though the tau level of dust in the atmosphere increased from 0.8 to 0.85.

The tau level of dust outside of the winter dust season is normally between 0.6 and 0.7. Even though Mars is moving out of winter, that level has increased slightly above InSight. And yet, even with a higher dust content and thus less sunlight, the lander’s dust-covered solar panels are generating power, at a very slightly higher level.

The InSight team had expected the lander to die in early September, at the latest. Instead, it keeps running, thus allowing it to detect on September 5th an impact created by a cluster of three asteroids, the first time scientists have ever pinpointed exactly when such a new impact occurred on Mars.

For the lander to survive for even longer, all it needs is one gust of wind across the solar panels to clean them off. The science team had expected this to happen periodically, based on past experience with the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. Unfortunately for InSight, it has not yet happened even once since it arrived on Mars in 2018. Nonetheless, it only has to happen once to save the lander.

Stay tuned. All is not yet lost.

The most recent status update on the Mars lander InSight, released today, shows a slight rise in the amount of power generated by its dust-covered solar panels.

As shown on the graph to the right, on August 27, 2022 the power level was 400 watt-hours generated per Martian day. On September, 5, 2022, the power level was 410 watt-hours per Martian day, the first power increase since late July. At the same time, the dust in the atmosphere continued to clear, going from a tau level of .88 to 0.8. Outside of the winter dust season tau is usually between 0.6 and 0.7.

The slight power increase continues to suggest that the lander’s death might be delayed. At 400 watt-hours per day, it has been able to run its seismometer since the beginning of July. With this slight increase, the chance increases that InSight will finally get that one gust of wind or dust devil that will blow the dust off its solar panels and allow it to recover some power and operate for longer.

According to a new update posted today by the InSight science team, the power being generated by the lander’s dust-covered solar panels once again did not decline last week, holding at 400 watt-hours generated per day for the fifth week in a row.

The graph to the right shows the trends since May. The dust in the atmosphere is indicated by the red line, marking what scientists call the tau level. A normal level outside of the winter dust season should be between 0.6 and 0.7 tau. Even though that dust season has been ending, that level has remained high, thus cutting off more of the sunlight that the Mars lander could use to generate the electricity needed by its seismometer.

That the power generated continues to hold steady however suggests that InSight’s seismometer might be able to continue working into September, detecting Martian earthquakes. The scientists had predicted the spacecraft would die sometime around now. Without doubt they are thrilled their prediction appears wrong.

That the lander might last longer also increases the chance that it might experience a wind event, such as a dust devil, that could blow the solar panels clear of dust and save the lander entirely. All it needs is one such event, which sadly has not occurred since InSight landed on Mars in 2018.

According to a new status update posted today by the science team, the power status for the Mars InSight lander continues to hold steady.

The graph to the right adds the new data, showing that the daily watt hours of power produced each day continues to hold at 400, while the dust in the atmosphere continues to drop towards its normal level of between 0.6 and 0.7 tau during the non-dust seasons.

These new numbers appear to be generally good news. Even though the dust continues to settle out of the atmosphere, it does not appear to be adding dust on the solar panels that would reduce their capability to generate power. Though the science team had predicted that the power levels would cause the mission to end sometime in August, at 400 watts per hour InSight has apparently continued to generate enough electricity to keep its seismometer running for at least another week.

Using a computer model combined with seismometer data gathered by the Mars lander InSight, scientists have concluded that there is little or no underground ice in the equatorial region where InSight sits.

From the paper’s abstract:

We use rock physics models to infer cement properties from seismic velocities. Model results confirm that the upper 300 m of Mars beneath InSight is most likely composed of sediments and fractured basalts. Grains within sediment layers are unlikely to be cemented by ice or other mineral cements. Hence, any existing cements are nodular or formed away from grain contacts. Fractures within the basalt layers could be filled with gas, 2% mineral cement and 98% gas, and no more than 20% ice. Thus, no ice- or liquid water-saturated layers likely exist within the upper 300 m beneath InSight. Any past cement at grain contacts has likely been broken by impacts or marsquakes.

As the lander sits just north of the equator in the red planet’s equatorial zone, which ample orbital data has suggested is a dry region (as shown in the global map below), this result is not a surprise. It does provide further confirmation however of this conclusion, that if there is any water on Mars within 30 degrees latitude of the equator, it will be deep underground, and likely only in certain regions.
» Read more

The InSight science team has decided to continue to operate the lander’s seismometer through August rather than turning it off at the end of June, even though that longer use will drain InSight’s batteries sooner and kill the lander shortly thereafter.

The previous plan would have allowed the lander to survive through the end of the year, but would have meant no earthquake data would have been gathered after June.

To enable the seismometer to continue to run for as long as possible, the mission team is turning off InSight’s fault protection system. While this will enable the instrument to operate longer, it leaves the lander unprotected from sudden, unexpected events that ground controllers wouldn’t have time to respond to.

“The goal is to get scientific data all the way to the point where InSight can’t operate at all, rather than conserve energy and operate the lander with no science benefit,” said Chuck Scott, InSight’s project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

Apparently they have realized that it is now very unlikely that a dust devil will come by and clear the dust from InSight’s solar panels, so keeping the spacecraft alive longer — but getting no data — does not make sense.

Martian quake map as seen by InSight, adapted from this 2021
presentation [pdf]

According to the InSight science team, the Mars lander and its seismometer will likely shut down operations by the end of the summer due to lack of power.

“Towards the end of summer of ’22, we anticipate our seismometer will be turned off, not because we want to turn it off but unfortunately, we don’t have the energy to run it,” Garcia said. She said the team will use it intermittently after that as long as power is available, but by the end of the year the spacecraft is expected to fall silent.

The intermittent readings of the seismometer will be of extremely limited use, as it will then be pure luck whether it detects a quake, and any detection will not provide the true rate of quakes on Mars.

The loss of power is due to dust on the solar panels. The team had hoped a dust devil would come by periodically to blow the panels clean, as happened routinely with the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, but InSight has not been so lucky.

It appears the safe mode that occurred shortly after InSight detected its largest Mars quake yet on May 10th was very temporary, though right now the seismometer is essentially the only instrument they have power to run.

Overall, this mission has a very spotty history. Its launch was delayed two years when the French attempt to build the seismometer failed. The delay cost NASA’s planetary program $150 million, at a minimum.

Then lander’s second of two main instruments, a German experiment to dig down 16 feet to insert a heat sensor into the ground, failed when its digging tool, dubbed the mole, was unable to penetrate the alien Martian soil.

Fortunately, InSight’s prime instrument, the seismometer (finally completed by JPL) worked, giving us a first look into the structure of Mars’ interior as well as where earthquakes are found on its surface.