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NASA’s three-and-a-half-year mission to collect seismic data from Mars is running out of juice

A magnitude 5 'marsquake' was recorded by NASA's InSight Mars lander on May 4. This is the strongest quake ever detected on another planet.

The lander has taken measures to conserve energy; engineers aim to return to normal operations next week.

NASA's InSight Mars Lander Gets a Power Boost The spacecraft successfully cleared some dust off its solar panels, helping to raise its energy and delay when it will need to switch off its science instruments. The team behind NASA’s InSight Mars lander has come up with an innovative way to boost the spacecraft’s energy at a time when its power levels have been falling. The lander’s robotic arm trickled sand near one solar panel, helping the wind to carry off some of the panel’s dust. The result was a gain of about 30 watt-hours of energy per sol, or Martian day.

April 01, 2021 NASA’s InSight lander used the scoop on its robotic arm to begin trickling soil over the cable connecting its seismometer to the spacecraft on March 14, 2021, the 816th Martian day, or sol of the mission. Scientists hope this make it easier to detect marsquakes by helping to insulate the cable from the wind and from the extreme temperature shifts that cause the cable to expand and contract. JPL manages InSight for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA’s Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. ...