With luck, InSight might survive until January.
that the lander would be forced to shut down this spring. By May, they thought the spacecraft could continue through the end of the summer and implemented a mode meant to prioritize getting power to the seismometer. The team also reset InSight's rules to avoid the protective"safe mode" that spacecraft usually enter when something is wrong — it will work right up until it doesn't.
Now, InSight is entering a season during which scientists usually see some regional dust storms, which they thought would speed the lander's demise. But the season is beginning more gently than it has in the past, offering InSight a reprieve. When InSight landed, it could generate 5,000 watt-hours each sol . Ever since, the power has decreased."Every time there's a storm or something on Mars, it'll go down," Scott said. Some storms knocked 100 watt-hours off production, some more like 1,000, he added."It'll vary depending on how large the storm is."
Some day, when the lander hasn't hit that, it will put itself into what mission personnel call"dead bus," when the spacecraft silently runs out the last of its battery."It'll get to a point where the battery will fail and there'll be no way for it to reboot itself," Scott said.
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