‘My power’s low’: NASA’s Insight Mars lander prepares to sign off

Re:‘My power’s low’: NASA’s Insight Mars lander prepares to ... by ilyt on Wednesday December 21, 2022 @09:40AM (#34081263)

So its essentially "the system needs to be cheap and light enough to beat bringing more panels"

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Re:‘My power’s low’: NASA’s Insight Mars lander prepares to ... by dougmany on Wednesday December 21, 2022 @01:39PM (#34084558)

I remember calculating the cost efficiency of adding a sun tracking mount to some panels. It turned out that the increased power would be about the same as adding an additional panel and one panel was cheaper than the mount. The mount also would only help half the year and the extra panel would help the whole year.

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Re:‘My power’s low’: NASA’s Insight Mars lander prepares to ... by implements on Wednesday December 21, 2022 @03:53PM (#34086246)

If your array is at ground level it still might be worth being able to manually adjust the mounting angle for different seasons (high sun / low sun).

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Re:‘My power’s low’: NASA’s Insight Mars lander prepares to ... by andrewflnr on Wednesday December 21, 2022 @04:23PM (#34086591)

But would the sun-tracking mount also let you shed dust buildup? That might make it worth it for long term missions. My next idea after blowers for removing dust was to just flip the panel vertical for a bit...

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Re:‘My power’s low’: NASA’s Insight Mars lander prepares to ... by ilyt on Thursday December 22, 2022 @04:08AM (#34091316)

Well, till you run out of roof space.

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