{"id":11596,"date":"2021-06-27T23:03:02","date_gmt":"2021-06-27T15:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/declining-power-supply-could-end-nasas-insight-mars-mission-next-year\/"},"modified":"2021-06-27T23:03:02","modified_gmt":"2021-06-27T15:03:02","slug":"declining-power-supply-could-end-nasas-insight-mars-mission-next-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/declining-power-supply-could-end-nasas-insight-mars-mission-next-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Declining power supply could end NASA\u2019s InSight Mars mission next year"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
One of InSight\u2019s solar arrays, on the left, is covered in dust in this picture taken in May. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Without a fortuitous whirlwind to clear dust off its solar panels, NASA\u2019s InSight lander could end its mission on Mars within a year due to dropping power levels, the project\u2019s chief scientist said last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a two-year extended mission which should take us to the end of calendar year 2022 if we can stay alive that long on Mars,\u201d said Bruce Banerdt, InSight\u2019s principal investigator.<\/p>\n

InSight landed on Mars in November 2018 on a mission to measure seismic activity and study the Red Planet\u2019s deep interior. Despite some snags with one of its two primary instruments, InSight has met all of its top-level mission objectives, Banerdt said in a June 21 meeting of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group.<\/p>\n

InSight\u2019s two-year primary mission ended at the end of 2020, and NASA approved a two-year extension to continue the mission\u2019s measurements.<\/p>\n

Banerdt said the spacecraft is \u201cexperiencing some pretty severe solar energy issues\u201d after dust accumulated on the solar arrays. The solar power crunch is \u201climiting our ability to take science measurements and is likely to eventually cause the end of the mission,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mission planners knew dust build-up on the lander\u2019s solar panels could limit the mission\u2019s longevity, but officials hoped wind gusts or dust devils might periodically clear off the fan-shaped arrays. So far, that hasn\u2019t happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was all anticipated before we launched,\u201d Banerdt said. \u201cWe were designed to be able to finish our prime mission with plenty of margin. We had hoped to get some dust cleaning, but that hasn\u2019t happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Banerdt said the InSight lander\u2019s two fan-shaped solar arrays are currently operating at just 20% efficiency.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe dust accumulation on the solar arrays has been considerable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mars is approaching aphelion July 12, the point in its orbit where it is farthest from the sun. That\u2019s when InSight\u2019s solar arrays will receive minimum energy from the sun, and temperatures at the spacecraft\u2019s landing site will be near their lowest.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s going to be extremely challenging in order to operate through that, especially with the instruments,\u201d Banerdt said.<\/p>\n

Ground teams at JPL have managed to keep InSight\u2019s seismometer operating as the lander\u2019s power levels have declined. For a time, scientists expected that the lander\u2019s entire science payload would have to be shut off for six months.<\/p>\n

At best, that would have resulted in a big data gap in InSight\u2019s science results. At worst, officials worried InSight would have been unable to survive the treacherous period around aphelion.<\/p>\n

Now managers are hopeful the lander will make it through the next few months. And there\u2019s a chance the seismometer could remain operational.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the other sensors have either been turned off or are being operated sporadically,\u201d Banerdt said. \u201cThis is resulting in an unfortunate hole in the meteorological data and the magnetic field data that we have been maintaining over the last Martian year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been rationing the on time of the instruments to accommodate the energy decrease, and we may have to actually power off the entire payload for some period around aphelion,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think we can probably get through the straits of aphelion here, but we\u2019re not sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

InSight\u2019s ground team devised a novel method of helping clear some of the dust off the craft\u2019s solar arrays. Using the scoop at the end of the lander\u2019s robotic arm, controllers gathered sand from the Martian surface and sprinkled the grains just upwind of the solar arrays.<\/p>\n

The wind blew the sand grains across the top of the solar arrays, knocking off some of the dust. The first try at this new technique resulted in a gain of about 30 watt-hours of energy per sol, or Martian day.<\/p>\n

That news was \u201cextremely, extremely welcome\u201d to the InSight team, Banerdt said.<\/p>\n

InSight\u2019s team has tried the same technique several more times, each giving a \u201cmarginal\u201d boost to the lander\u2019s power output, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe we\u2019re understanding better how to do this operation,\u201d Banerdt said. \u201cWe may be able to try it again before energy decreases to the point where we can\u2019t use our robotic arm. But at least that buys us a little bit of headroom that we didn\u2019t have before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before attempting to sprinkle sand over the solar arrays, engineers sent commands to activate the spacecraft\u2019s solar panel deployment motors to shake the dust off, but that didn\u2019t succeed.<\/p>\n

As Mars begins traveling closer to the sun, more solar energy should allow InSight to begin generating more electricity. But the improvement may only be temporary until dust storm season begins next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome time during the middle of next calendar year, around March\/April of 2022, the energy starts to decrease pretty rapidly again because of the confluence of increased dust accumulation, because of a dustier atmosphere, and the Mars orbital geometry,\u201d Banerdt said. \u201cSo unless we get a fairly significant increase in our solar array output, we\u2019re likely to end our mission some time around that time next year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Artist\u2019s concept of the InSight lander on Mars. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

InSight\u2019s French seismometer instrument has recorded 630 seismic events to date, according to Banerdt. Scientists confirmed InSight made the first-ever detection of a \u201cmarsquake\u201d in early 2019.<\/p>\n

Banerdt said five of those seismic events are \u201cgold standard events\u201d with clear seismic phases and polarization data to help locate the source of the tremors.<\/p>\n

Another 106 have clearly observed seismic signals and phases, but no polarization. Virtually all of those have been confirmed as genuine tectonic quakes, Banerdt said.<\/p>\n

He said many of the other seismic signals are also likely real marsquakes, but haven\u2019t been confirmed.<\/p>\n

The five quakes with confirmed locations all occurred in the Cerberus Fossae region, home to trenches that scientists previously hypothesized could be created from faults where segments of the Martian surface are being pulled apart. InSight\u2019s findings confirm the region is seismically active.<\/p>\n

InSight\u2019s other main instrument is the German-developed Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package, or HP3.<\/p>\n

A major element of the HP3 instrument is a self-hammering 16-inch (40-centimeter) probe that was supposed to dig into the Martian soil to measure the thermal gradient in the uppermost layers of the crust. The metallic probe, with a trailing umbilical tether, needed to reach a depth of at least 10 feet (3 meters) to provide the expected science data.<\/p>\n

Instead, the mole only reached about a foot, or 30 centimeters, below the surface before its progress stalled. Ground teams tried nearly two years to get the mole into the Martian crust, including attempts using the scoop on InSight\u2019s robotic arm to help push the probe into the ground.<\/p>\n

But the tries turned up empty, and mission managers gave up on the mole in January.<\/p>\n

Banerdt said the instrument is returning some partial data on the thermal conductivity of the top layer of Martian soil.<\/p>\n

Despite the instrument woes and the declining power generation, which was expected, Banerdt said InSight has been a success. The mission was the first to detect marsquakes, yielding insights into the Martian interior that will help scientists chart Martian evolution and compare the planet\u2019s evolution with that of Earth.<\/p>\n

Some of the mission\u2019s findings are still awaiting publication in scientific journals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is finally the payoff of 25 to 30 years of efforts by many of us in the geophysical community and on the InSight team,\u201d Banerdt said. \u201cI think we\u2019ve broken a lot of our theoretical models of Mars\u2019s formation and evolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of InSight\u2019s solar arrays, on the left, is covered in dust in this picture taken in May. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech Without a fortuitous whirlwind to clear dust off its solar panels, NASA\u2019s InSight lander could end its mission on Mars within a year due to dropping power levels, the project\u2019s chief scientist said last week. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11596"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11596\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}