NASA's InSight Lander Reveals the Deep Interior of Mars

power to easily get through the first two years.

Elizabeth Barrett
But there's a lot of dust in Mars's atmosphere, and that's falling down on top of our solar arrays and slowly blocking the sun.

Bruce Banerdt
As the panels are getting dustier. We started wracking our brains of whether there's anything we can do to try to clean off those panels ourselves.

Kathya Garcia
When the idea of using dirt to clean the solar arrays was first proposed, it seemed counterintuitive.

Elizabeth Barrett
We were actually able to use the arm and the scoop to scoop up some soil from the ground and dump it over the lander, having some of that heavier sand blow onto the arrays and knock some of the dust off. So we essentially used it as an array cleaning tool.

Kathya Garcia
Cleaning with dirt actually worked!

Bruce Banerdt
It allowed us to actually keep the instruments going during the low power season where the Mars is farthest from the sun during the winter. Unfortunately, later in the summer, we think that the power is going to be dropping so quickly due to the atmosphere getting dustier due to the alignment of Mars and the sun.

Kathya Garcia
We're going to be at a point where we can no longer have all of our instruments on, which means we'll be turning off the seismometer and other instruments on board.The last day is going to be bittersweet. Obviously, we're preparing for it.

Elizabeth Barrett
We know it's coming. But that first moment where we don't hear from the lander when we expect to, that's going to be tough.

Mark Panning
It's left a permanent mark on me and I literally tattooed InSight onto my arm. I'll never let it go.

Bruce Banerdt
We've really rewritten sort of the chapter of the encyclopedia on the interior of Mars. That was our last big hole in our understanding of the planet. There's a lot of data that people are going to be looking at for decades to come.

Elizabeth Barrett
We accomplished so many of our science goals, and we're going to have something to look back on and be proud.