Just out of interest what kind of power production could be expected if instead of horizontal panels it had them facing east west at say a 70deg tilt to the horizontal. That is almost vertical. I assume that dust accumulation would then not be an issue.

Just in case this might be useful to anyone, I have compiled the full set of Mission Manager reports from the InSight Analysts Notebook from sol 1 to sol 1100. It is a c. 5000 line text file.
Phil

There must have been some thought about striking the edge of an array with the scoop, or lifting the edge with the scoop so that when it released everything would shake... dangerous early in the mission but possibly acceptable when you are facing the end... But I suppose it was felt that it wouldn't help or it would compromise the last chances to collect data. Shame! It would have been a bit like the old Apollo 12 'hit the TV with the hammer' routine.

Phil

News Release dated June 21, 2022

"NASA's InSight Gets a Few Extra Weeks of Mars Science"

https://mars.nasa.gov/news/9207/nasas-insig...e/?site=insight

Where can I get the quake data such as date, longitude, latitude, Richter scale?
Thanks!

It sounds like you want the 'event catalog'
http://ds.iris.edu/ds/nodes/dmc/tools/mars-events/

The raw data are here:

https://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/missions/insight/seis.htm

But it's up to you to figure out what it all means. If you want it all processed and put in simple terms (as your question suggests), you may have to wait for researchers to do the processing and publish the results, and since they are still collecting the last bits of data that may be a while.

Phil

Thanks All! I think I found my answer. The web service for iris or fdsnws seems to have a rest call that includes magnitude with latitude and longitude. I will look more into that.

Seems event web surface doe not include Mars. But I will keep looking!

Instead, the team now plans to program the lander so that the seismometer can operate longer, perhaps until the end of August or into early September. Doing so will discharge the lander’s batteries sooner and cause the spacecraft to run out of power at that time as well, but it might enable the seismometer to detect additional marsquakes.

Predicting precisely when is difficult, but based on the latest power readings, engineers now believe the lander could shut down between October of this year and January 2023.

The mission carefully monitors the lander’s power level, which has been steadily declining as dust accumulates on its solar arrays. By Monday, Oct. 3, the storm had grown large enough and was lofting so much dust that the thickness of the dusty haze in the Martian atmosphere had increased by nearly 40% around InSight. With less sunlight reaching the lander’s panels, its energy fell from 425 watt-hours per Martian day, or sol, to just 275 watt-hours per sol.

InSight’s seismometer has been operating for about 24 hours every other Martian day. But the drop in solar power does not leave enough energy to completely charge the batteries every sol. At the current rate of discharge, the lander would be able to operate only for several weeks. So to conserve energy, the mission will turn off InSight’s seismometer for the next two weeks.

“We were at about the bottom rung of our ladder when it comes to power. Now we’re on the ground floor,” said InSight’s project manager, Chuck Scott of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “If we can ride this out, we can keep operating into winter – but I’d worry about the next storm that comes along.”