(NEW YORK) — NASA’s Mars lander, called Insight, is slowly losing power because its two solar panels are covered in dust and it will need to mostly shut down by the end of May.
NASA is being forced to end its Mars lander mission early because of dust.Officials announced Tuesday the InSight spacecraft is slowly losing power because its two solar panels are covered in dust.Morever, the dust levels in the atmosphere are only increasing and sunlight is decreasing as Mars enters winter, which is speeding up the loss of power.

Power levels will likely die out in July — effectively ending operations — and, by the end of the year, project leaders expect InSight will be “inoperative.”

“People can obviously relate to, in their own homes, they have to dust because dust settles,” Chuck Scott, InSight’s project manager, told ABC News. “It’s the same sort of thing with these solar panels. We have dust in the Mars atmosphere that gets kicked up because of the local weather … storms where you get the dust kicked up because you have lot of wind.”

“Since Mars’s atmosphere is thinner, it goes up into the upper atmosphere and it can get distributed more widely than it would on Earth and it’ll deposit back down on whatever’s below including our spacecraft and the solar panels,” he added.

InSight is currently generating about one-tenth of the power it was when it landed on Mars in November 2018.

When the spacecraft first landed, the solar panels were producing 5,000 watt-hour for each Martian day, enough to power an electric oven for an hour and 40 minutes, NASA said. Currently, the panels are producing 500 watt-hour per Martian day, only enough to power an electric oven for 10 minutes.

Project leaders had expected the gradual dust buildup on the solar panels, but had hoped passing whirlwinds on Mars might have cleaned some of it off, but none have so far.

“Two rovers we sent back in 2003, they both experienced what we would call ‘natural cleaning’ or ‘dust cleaning events,'” Scott said. “Those winds went over the vehicles and cleared a lot fo the dust off the solar panels of those vehicles. We were were kind of hoping this would occur with a stationary lander.”

Due to the lower power, the team will put InSight’s robotic arm in a resting position known as “retirement pose” later this month. Then, by the end of the summer, the lander’s seismometer will only be turned on at certain times, such as night when winds are not as high.

Because energy is being preserved for the seismometer, NASA said non-seismic instruments “will rarely be turned on” starting next month.

InSight has detected more than 1,300 quakes since its landing, the most recent of which occurred on May 4. The data gathered from the marsquakes have helped scientists understand the composition of Mars’s deep interior, including the planet’s crust, mantle and core.

NASA said the lander had completed its primary goals during its first two years on Mars and was currently on an extended mission.

“There wasn’t really anything known about the interior of Mars,” Scott said. “Why that’s important is NASA had been looking at how our own planets formed in the Solar System. especially the rocky ones like Venus, Earth, Mars and even our own Moon.”

This is not the first time NASA has ended a Mars lander due to dust.

Opportunity, a robotic rover, landed on the planet in 2004 and was in operation until June 2018, when a global dust storm completely covered its solar panels, which ended communications with project leaders.

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(CHICAGO) — The mother of a Chicago student faces child endangerment charges after the student brought a loaded gun to school in a backpack and the weapon accidentally discharged, police said.

The incident occurred at Walt Disney Magnet School on the city’s North Side shortly before 10 a.m. Tuesday, according to the Chicago Police Department.

“The weapon accidentally discharged in the backpack while inside a classroom, with a bullet striking the ground and ricocheting, resulting in a classmate being grazed in the abdomen,” the department said in a statement.

The classmate was taken to a local hospital in “good condition,” the department said. Information on the ages of the students involved was not given.

Following the incident, Tatanina Kelly, 28, was charged with three misdemeanor counts of child endangerment, police said.

Kelly appeared in court Wednesday, where a judge set bond at $10,000, Chicago ABC station WLS reported.

Her attorney, Rodger Clarke, argued that Kelly had no criminal record and that this was a “one-time incident, not soon to be repeated,” according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Walt Disney Magnet School has students in preschool through eighth grade.

In a letter obtained by WLS that was sent to parents on Tuesday, the school’s principal, Paul Riskus, addressed the incident.

“This morning during school hours, a gun was accidentally discharged on school grounds,” he wrote. “The gun discharged in a backpack and hit the floor, causing some damage and releasing debris.”

Riskus said no one was “seriously injured” and that school staff secured the gun and contacted police and and the Chicago Public Schools’ Office of Safety and Security. Police confiscated the weapon.

“We are working closely with the CPS Office of Safety and Security to make a safety plan moving forward,” he wrote. “Please know that we are taking this situation extremely seriously, and CPD is investigating this incident.”

Worried family members of students who attend the school rushed to the campus in the wake of Tuesday’s incident.

“All I heard was there was a gun and I came flying,” Jennifer Uribe, whose daughter texted her about the incident, told WLS. “I wasn’t going to text her because if she had to hide, I didn’t want her doing that. So I said, ‘Stop texting me’ and I came here.”

Edwina Watkins, whose 12-year-old grandson attends the school, told WLS she was shocked.

“It is shocking for one, for a little kid to have a gun, something that should be hard for an adult to have at a school,” Watkins said.

Victor Garcia, whose son is in pre-K, told WLS he was “freaking out.”

“Gun shootings going all over the country,” he said. “This is crazy.”

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