19. May 2022
NASA’s Insight lander, which landed on Mars in 2018, is running out of energy. “NASA’s ‘Insight’ Mars lander is gradually losing power and is expected to end scientific operations this summer,” the US space agency said on Tuesday (local time).
The team expects it to become inoperable by December, completing its mission on the red planet.
The stationary lander arrived on Mars almost four years ago to measure seismic activity. He achieved his scientific goals after just over two years, so that he has been on an “extended mission” ever since.
Recently, however, the power supply has clearly decreased because the two 2.2 meter wide solar modules are covered with increasingly dense dust.
The fact that this did not happen earlier is also due to a trick used by NASA engineers: they used a robotic arm on the lander to scatter sand near a solar cell. When the wind blew it over the solar cell, it also took some of the dust deposited there with it – and the solar cell was able to continue to supply the lander with energy.