Microsoft Word In a first, nasa mars lander feels shockwaves from meteor impact

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Shutting down 
Now, after nearly four years on the Martian surface, 
InSight’s mission is ending. The spacecraft’s fate is in the 
hands of the Martian winds, which carry the planet’s 
vermillion sand aloft, sometimes whipping it into dust 
devils and planet-spanning storms. A thick layer of dust 
has already settled on the spacecraft’s solar panels, 
blocking the sunlight that powers the lander and its 
instruments. In May, as the spacecraft’s power dwindled, 
mission leaders estimated that InSight’s seismometer 
might take data through the end of the summer—but that 
depended on the Martian weather. 
“This is a very dynamic season on Mars—it’s dust storm 
season,” Banerdt told National Geographic at the time. 
“Even if we don’t get a dust storm right here at InSight, 
there are dust storms kicking up all over the planet that 
inject stuff into the atmosphere that can affect the amount 
of solar energy we’re getting.” 
“That said,” he continued, “we’ve gotten really good at 
finding change in the couch cushions.” 
Since May, Mars has been kinder to the lander than 
expected. 
“The dust has been holding very steady, maybe even 
dropping a little bit, and our power has actually been 

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rising, just a little bit, over the last month or so,” Banerdt 
says. “But all of our historical data suggests the dustiness 
in the atmosphere will increase pretty significantly in the 
next month or so.” 
If the team is lucky, InSight could continue taking the 
planet’s pulse through the end of the year—or perhaps a 
bit longer. And if they’re really lucky, a dust devil will 
spin through the lander’s perch in Elysium Planitia, clear 
off the solar panels, and allow the spacecraft to once 
again soak up the sunlight. 
But that remains to be seen. Mars is, after all, a fickle 
world—a planet of promise and peril. It’s a world that 
had seduced scientists with hints of life while 
confounding efforts to detect it, a world with terrains that 
are tantalizingly Earth-like yet lethal to life as we know 
it. 
Beneath those bewitching blue sunsets, not even robots 
can live forever. 
PDF's generated at: Wed Sep 21 2022 02:48:01 
GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) 
Source: 
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/in- 
a-first-nasa-mars-lander-feels-shockwaves-from-meteor- 
impacts