Skip to main content

NASA’s InSight put into safe mode during Martian dust storm

Mars is a tough environment for many reasons: It’s cold, the atmosphere is extremely thin, and the planet experiences epic dust storms which can cover everything within a region in a coating of particles. One such dust storm has required that the NASA InSight lander be placed into safe mode in order to preserve its battery power.

Dust storms can sometimes encompass the entire planet, but this particular storm is regional to where the lander is located. The biggest threat that the dust storm poses to the lander is by covering up its solar panels and thereby reducing the amount of energy the lander can collect. Not only does dust accumulate on the panels, but it also blocks sunlight coming through the atmosphere. Without enough sunlight reaching the solar panels to recharge its batteries, the lander mission is at risk — like the dust storms which lead to the demise of the Opportunity rover in 2018.

This selfie of NASA’s InSight lander is a mosaic made up of 14 images taken on March 15 and April 11 .
This selfie of NASA’s InSight lander is a mosaic made up of 14 images taken on March 15 and April 11 – the 106th and 133rd Martian days, or sols, of the mission – by the spacecraft Instrument Deployment Camera located on its robotic arm. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Fortunately, the InSight team got an early warning that the dust storm was coming thanks to its detection by an instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, an orbiting craft that creates maps of the Martian surface. The images from the Mars Color Imager showed the dust storm moving in, and they now suggest that the regional storm is on its way out.

Recommended Videos

To keep the lander safe, it was put into safe mode on Friday, January 7, meaning it stopped collecting science data and used only minimal functions. This helps to conserve power, which was already a concern for the mission.

“Even before this recent dust storm, dust had been accumulating on InSight’s solar panels, reducing the lander’s power supply,” NASA wrote in an update. “Using a scoop on the lander’s robotic arm, InSight’s team came up with an innovative way to reduce the dust on one panel, and gained several boosts of energy during 2021, but these activities become increasingly difficult as available energy decreases.”

The team is hopeful that its efforts will see the lander through until the dust storm passes and they can resume science operations. “InSight’s engineers are hopeful they will be able to command the lander to exit safe mode next week,” NASA wrote. “This will allow more flexibility in operating the lander, as communication, which requires a relatively large amount of energy, is limited in safe mode to conserve battery charge.”

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
NASA’s InSight lander looks into Mars to study the planet’s core
This artist’s concept shows a cutaway of Mars, along with the paths of seismic waves from two separate quakes in 2021. Detected by NASA’s InSight mission, these seismic waves were the first ever identified to enter another planet’s core.

NASA's Mars InSight lander may have come to the end of its mission last year, but data from the lander is still being used to contribute to science. Data that the lander collected on marsquakes, seismic events that are similar to earthquakes, has been used to get the best look yet at Mars's core.

The lander was armed with a highly sensitive seismometer instrument that could detect seismic waves as they moved through the martian interior. By looking at the way in which these waves bounced off boundaries and moved at different speeds through different materials, scientists can work out what the inside of a planet is composed of. The latest findings show that the martian core is around 2,220 miles across, which is smaller than previously thought. The core is also denser than previously believed The results also showed that around one-fifth of the core, which is made up of liquid iron alloy, is composed of sulfur, oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen.

Read more
NASA’s Mars rover makes ‘one small drop for humankind’
The first Mars rock sample left at a collection site by NASA's Perseverance rover.

NASA has taken a significant step forward in getting Mars samples back to Earth after its Perseverance rover deposited its first rock-filled tube on the martian surface for possible collection by a later mission.

Perseverance, which has been gathering samples from Mars since arriving there in February 2021, deposited the sample on Wednesday, December 21.

Read more
NASA declares Mars InSight lander mission officially over
This illustration shows NASA's InSight spacecraft with its instruments deployed on the Martian surface.

Just over four years after reaching Mars, NASA has officially announced the end of its InSight lander mission.

The declaration came on Wednesday, December 21, after NASA failed to make contact with the lander across two consecutive attempts, leading the mission team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to conclude that InSight’s solar-powered batteries had run out of energy, a state referred to as “dead bus.”

Read more