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." One of the dust-covered solar panels on NASA's InSight Mars lander in an image captured on April 24, 2022. After about four years of probing the interior of Mars, the InSight spacecraft will have to end its operations this summer because of dust that has accumulated on its solar panels. NASA/JPL-Caltech via Getty Images "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…