NASA's InSight Mars rover is in very bad shape

The Mars rover InSight, which landed on Mars in November 2018, has not much time left after a dust storm on 7 January left too much dust on its solar panels. 

In early January the space agency was forced to put the InSight rover into a reduced mode because of a dust storm in the area where it was located. According to NASA, this was necessary because the dust storm meant that there was not enough sunlight to operate the device, so the battery was reduced to keep it going. At the time, the space agency reported that it had managed to contact the probe after the storm and that its operation was considered stable.

Current forecasts according to the device will reach a critical state around May or June, when it will no longer be able to do its job, and the batteries will be completely discharged by the end of the year. Bruce Banerdt, InSight's chief scientist, said last summer that dust accumulated on the rover's solar panels would cause the rover to shut down permanently.

From November 2018 to February 2021 : Mars InSight solar panels are now so covered in Martian dust that the end of mission is expected around this summer. pic.twitter.com/syL0pQfocH

- Niels 🛫 (@Space_Baguette) February 7, 2022

Although the shutdown of InSight is inevitable, and at best they can only delay the process, NASA has been trying to extend the life of the Mars rover since last year with an interesting exercise. In this operation, sand was scattered near the solar panel with a milling spoon, so that the wind blowing in the grains carried some of the dust particles that had been stuck there.

NASA's Mars rover landed on Mars in November 2018, and although it was originally planned for two years, as things went well, the space agency extended its mission for another two years. The mission has been a great success, including unravel the anatomy of Mars, it turns out, for example, that the red planet is made of the same materials as Earth, but has a very different structure.