Lander will be lost to dust

A Nasa spacecraft on Mars is headed for a dusty demise. The Insight lander is losing power because of all the dust on its solar panels. Nasa said yesterday it will keep using the spacecraft’s seismometer to register marsquakes until the power peters out, likely in July. Then flight controllers will monitor InSight until the end of this year, before calling everything off. ‘‘There really hasn’t been too much doom and gloom on the team. We’re really still focused on operating the spacecraft,’’ said Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Bruce Banerdt, the principal scientist. Since landing on Mars in 2018, InSight has detected more than 1300 marsquakes; the biggest one, a magnitude 5, occurred two weeks ago. It will be Nasa’s second Mars lander lost to dust: A global dust storm took out Opportunity in 2018.