Maybe on the next rover, they can include a brush or blower on the arm so they can dust off the solar panels occasionally.
Because the linked article doesn't explain, here's the Wikipedia blurb about what InSight is/was:
The Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission is a robotic lander designed to study the deep interior of the planet Mars. It was manufactured by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and most of its scientific instruments were built by European agencies. The mission launched on 5 May 2018 at 11:05:01 UTC aboard an Atlas V-401 launch vehicle and successfully landed at Elysium Planitia on Mars on 26 November 2018 at 19:52:59 UTC. InSight traveled 483×106 km (300×106 mi) during its journey. As of 25 May 2022, InSight has been active on Mars for 1242 sols (1276 days; 3 years, 180 days).
InSight's objectives are to place a seismometer, called Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), on the surface of Mars to measure seismic activity and provide accurate 3D models of the planet's interior; and measure internal heat transfer using a heat probe called HP3 to study Mars' early geological evolution. This could bring a new understanding of how the Solar System's terrestrial planets – Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars – and Earth's Moon form and evolve.
The lander was originally planned for launch in March 2016. An instrument problem delayed the launch beyond the 2016 launch window. NASA officials rescheduled the InSight launch to May 2018 and during the wait the instrument was repaired. This increased the total cost from US$675 million to US$830 million. NASA stated that due to excessive dust on its solar panels preventing it from recharging, they plan to put InSight in low-power mode for detecting seisemic events in July 2022 and continue monitoring the lander through the operational period ending in December 2022.
InSight recently recorded its largest earthquake a M5. And it was far enough away that it might have passed the Martian core, constraining its diameter.
I think there have been six quakes large enough to determine the location, i.e. a distance and azimuth. There have been hundreds of smaller quakes where they determine seismicity patterns, but not location.
I feel like I'm in a time warp lately. Bunch of things obvious and non-obvious contributing to this, but if someone asked me when this landed I would have said end of 2020 or so. It's disturbing lol.
I have no recollection of this lander. Strange.
Technical off topic: why does NASA like to store and/or share its images in the TIFF format? IIRC, the last time I saw it used was when I had a scanner in the early 2000s. Is there any technical/digital preservation reason?
The wikipedia article for TIFF [1] actually has a "digital preservation" section but just says it's _possible_ to create a TIFF image without proprietary headers or compression technologies, which doesn't sound to be that relevant nor impossible to achieve with other formats.
EDIT: nevermind, this might be the reason: "The inclusion of the SampleFormat tag in TIFF 6.0 allows TIFF files to handle advanced pixel data types, including integer images with more than 8 bits per channel and floating point images. This tag made TIFF 6.0 a viable format for scientific image processing where extended precision is required. An example would be the use of TIFF to store images acquired using scientific CCD cameras that provide up to 16 bits per photosite of intensity resolution."
Is this really only possible with TIFF? Or is it just because it's what they've used in the 90s, and since it's still viable now, they might as well keep using it for consistency?
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIFF