NASA's InSight Mars Lander Gets Much-Needed Dust Cleaning, Results in Power Production Boost

The InSight Mars lander of NASA recently got a much-needed dust cleaning that resulted in an improvement in its production of power.

A SpaceFlight Insider specified that this particular lander has called the surface of Mars home for nearly three years, having landed in 2018. This mission was initially planned to last just two years.

Nevertheless, NASA announced recently, a two-year extension to the science mission of the InSight Mars lander.

This means that the accumulation of dust on its solar panels could prove challenging, moving forward. With the declining power levels, there is a need for the dust to be somehow removed.

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Boost in Power

Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA came up with what seems on the surface as described to be a "counter-intuitive solution," dropping larger sand particles close to the solar panels of the lander, to loosen the ones that are already there.

While such an approach may seem counter-productive, it makes sense when the notion of the Martian wind is coming into play.

Through the use of the robotic arm of the lander to scoop up sand, and then drop it onto the payload deck of the InSight lander, NASA explained the wind could push some of the particles of the dust over the solar panels, not to mention knock off and carry some of the tinier particles away.

It was easiest for the robotic arm to be positioned over the deck of the lander, high enough for the winds to blow sand over panels.

Certain enough, with winds that blew northwest at 20-feet per second maximum, the sand's trickling coincided with an abrupt bump in the overall power of the spacecraft.

When the approach was tried last month, a similar CΙnet report specified, it resulted in an increase in energy of approximately 30 watt-hours each Martian day.

In a NASA news release, Matt Golombek an InSight science team member said, they were not sure this would work, although they were delighted that it did.

Then, early this month, when it was tried again, it resulted in an additional two-percent boost in power each day, NASA said. More attempts are expected later this on.

In a related report from Astronomy Now, NASA, there is no guarantee that the NASA InSight Mars lander will have all the power needed, although these recent cleanings need to give it "some helpful margin" in its power reserves as the Red Planet reaches aphelion, its farthest point from the Sun.

Attempts to Clear the Dust from InSight

A NASA Science report earlier this month said, InSight science team had been thinking of ways on how to clear dust from the lander's solar panels for nearly a year.

For example, they tried to pulse the solar panel deployment motors to shake the dust off but the scheme was unsuccessful.

Then, more recently, some members of the science team began to pursue the counterintuitive approach of trickling sand close to, but not on top of the panels.

Golombeck noted it might be possible to strike dust on the panels that have grains of sand that would "saltate" or hop off the surface of the panel and skip through the air in the wind.

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