InSight Mars lander waits out dust storm NASAJPL
had grown large enough and was lofting so much dust that the thickness of the dusty haze in the Martian atmosphere had increased by nearly 40% around InSight. With less sunlight reaching the lander's panels, its energy fell from 425 watt-hours per Martian day, or sol, to just 275 watt-hours per sol.solar power
"We were at about the bottom rung of our ladder when it comes to power. Now we're on the ground floor," said InSight's project manager, Chuck Scott of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California."If we can ride this out, we can keep operating into winter—but I'd worry about the next storm that comes along."
The beige clouds seen in this global map of Mars are a continent-size dust storm captured on Sept. 29, 2022, by the Mars Climate Imager camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. NASA’s Perseverance, Curiosity, and InSight missions are labeled, showing the vast distances between them.
Mars dust storms aren't as violent or dramatic as Hollywood portrays them. While winds can blow up to 60 miles per hour , the Martian air is thin enough that it has just a fraction of the strength of storms on Earth. Mostly, the storms are messy: They toss billowing dust high into the atmosphere, which slowly drops back down, sometimes taking weeks.
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