A dust storm on Mars has required that the NASA InSight lander be placed into safe mode in order to preserve its battery power.
Mars is a tough environment for many reasons: It’s cold, the atmosphere is extremely thin, and the planet experiences epic dust storms which can cover everything within a region in a coating of particles. One such dust storm has required that the NASA InSight lander be placed into safe mode in order to preserve its battery power.
Fortunately, the InSight team got an early warning that the dust storm was coming thanks to its detection by an instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, an orbiting craft that creates maps of the Martian surface. The images from the Mars Color Imager showed the dust storm moving in, and they now suggest that the regional storm is on its way out.