In addition, the InSight team selected a landing site in Elysium Planitia, a windswept plain on the Red Planet’s equator that receives plenty of sunlight. It was hoped that passing dust devils would be able to clean the panels, which it did many times with Spirit and Opportunity, so they could last for years after their lifespan.
But although InSight has spotted hundreds of dust devils passing by, since it opened on Mars in November 2018, no one has been close enough to clean the dining table panels. Today, InSight’s solar power only delivers 27% of its dust-free capacity. . The energy has to be split between scientific instruments, a robotic arm, the spacecraft’s radio and a multitude of heating devices that keep everything in order despite freezing temperatures. As the windiest season of March has just ended, the team does not expect a cleaning event in the coming months.
Mars is currently moving towards what is known as Aphels, the point in its orbit at which it is furthest from the Sun. This means that the sunlight, which is already weak on the Martian surface, will degrade, which will reduce the performance when InSight needs its heaters to stay warm. Mars will approach the Sun again in July 2021. After that, the team will begin its full scientific operations.
“The amount of power available over the next few months will really depend on the weather,” said Chuck Scott, InSight project manager, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “As part of our comprehensive mission planning, we have developed an operational strategy to keep InSight safe in winter so that we can resume scientific operations as the sun increases.” JPL is leading the InSight mission, although the spacecraft and its solar panels were built by Lockheed Martin Space of Denver, Colorado.
Over the coming weeks and months, InSight scientists will carefully choose which instruments to turn off on a daily basis in order to maintain power for heating devices and energy-intensive activities such as radio communications. InSight’s weather sensors will likely stay off most of the time (resulting in infrequent updates). the weather side of the mission), and all instruments around the aphelion must be switched off for some time.
Currently, the power levels seem strong enough to take the lander through the winter. However, the generation of solar energy on Mars is always somewhat uncertain. Der Opportunity Rover was forced to shut down after a series of dust storms in 2019 darkened the Martian sky and Spirit did not survive the March winter 2010. If the InSight runs out of power due to a sudden dust storm, it can restart itself when the sunlight returns when the electronics have weathered the extreme cold.
Later that week, InSight is instructed to stretch its robotic arm over the panels so a camera can view the dust cover up close. Then the team pulses the cars that unfolded each panel to disrupt the dust and see if the wind blows it away. The team thinks it’s a long shot, but it’s worth it.
“The InSight team has come up with a strong plan to make it through the winter safely and show up on the other side to complete our extensive scientific mission by 2022,” said Bruce Banerdt of JPL, InSight chief investigator. ‘We have a great vehicle and an excellent team. I look forward to many more new discoveries from InSight in the future. ”
More about the mission
JPL manages InSight for NASA’s Directorate Science Mission. InSight is part of NASA’s discovery program administered by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its sail phase and lander, and assisted in spacecraft operations for the mission.
A number of European partners, including the French Center National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Airline Center (DLR), support the InSight mission. CNES provided the seismic experiment for the internal structure (SIX) Instrument to NASA with the main researcher at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions to SEIS come from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR delivered the package for the heat flow and the physical properties (HP3) Instrument with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronomy in Poland. The Spanish Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) provided the temperature and wind sensors.
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