Where would Mars crews get power, even during long dust storms?

"Dust storms can affect solar panels in two ways: Dust reduces sunlight filtering through the atmosphere, and it can also accumulate on the panels."

"The whirlwinds and gusts of dust storms have helped to clear solar panels over time, as with the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rover missions. While InSight’s weather sensors have detected many passing whirlwinds, none have cleared any dust."

"NASA’s InSight lander is stable and sending health data from Mars to Earth after going into safe mode Friday, Jan. 7, following a large, regional dust storm that reduced the sunlight reaching its solar panels. In safe mode, a spacecraft suspends all but its essential functions."

"The team anticipates that continued dust accumulation will progressively diminish the spacecraft’s overall power budget in the months ahead and has been carefully conserving energy by turning on science instruments for limited periods of time."

"It's possible that a layer of dust deposited on the rover's solar panels by the recent global dust storm is blocking sunlight that could recharge its batteries."

"A windy period on Mars -- known to Opportunity's team as "dust-clearing season" -- occurs in the November-to-January time frame and has helped clean the rover's panels in the past."

"These cleaning dust devils have even been imaged by both rovers on the surface and spacecraft in orbit... battery power levels aboard both Spirit and Opportunity increased by several percent during a single Martian night, when the logical expectation was that they would continue to decrease."

"Both Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, were designed to last only 90 days on the Martian surface, with the expectation that the planet's extreme winters and dust storms could cut their mission short."

"The rover has lasted nearly 15 years: It last communicated on June 10 before being forced into hibernation by the growing dust storm."

"Short circuit current typically rebounds after solar cell is cleaned of Mars dust."

"The TOPSIS compromise solution achieves a discharging–heating exergy efficiency of 71.31%, a round-trip performance coefficient of 2.3716, and a total mass of 34,526.18 kg."

"The greatest dust storm observed on Mars began in 1971 before the arrival of Mariner 9, obscured nearly all of the planet’s surface for several months, and raised dust up above 50 km in altitude."

"General circulation modeling indicates that the rapid development and the variability of these storms are due to a Native-dynamic feedback in which suspended dust absorbs solar radiation, heats the atmosphere and thereby alters pressure gradients. This, in turn, modifies the winds raising dust into the atmosphere and redistributing it across the planet."

"During local dust storms, most of the suspended dust comprising the storm is confined below 20 km. During larger dust storms, however, micron-sized dust particles may be mixed to higher altitudes."

"Observed thermal IR spectra indicate that dust suspended in the atmosphere is a mixture dominated by igneous silicates containing mainly Si02 (> 60%), or by weathering P r odiict s such as clay minerals, perhaps with some basalt also present."

"The opacity of the sky is best known at the two Viking Lan er sites, where the visual, vertical-column optical depth never fell below a valu tenths during the 1 and 1/4 Mars years of observations and yet exceeded 2-3 during two great dust storms in 1977."

"To provide sufficient power, a nuclear fission surface power (FSP) system is proposed with a total capacity of 1 MWel."

"fission surface power systems (FSPS) are described as “enabling for the human exploration of Mars.”"

"A regenerative fuel cell using a propellant tank recycled from the lander was found to have the best energy density and scalability among all the options investigated."

"The preferred system implementation approach uses crew-assisted assembly and in-situ radiation shielding via installation of the reactor in an excavated hole."

"The thermal energy reservoir, while having the worst storage efficiency, can be constructed through in situ resource utilization (ISRU), and is a promising long-term option."

"For load following and redundancy purposes, the FSPS consists of three 333 kWe reactors and PCS to provide a total of 1 MWe for 15 years."

"Several main load-following scenarios are studied and accommodated, including an extended dust storm, nighttime, daytime, and transient peak power operation."

"The optimal configuration is a sCO2 Brayton cycle with 60% regeneration and two stages of intercooling."

"The mass of a self-deployed, self-shielded fission system including the mobile PMAD cart was approximately twice that of the in-situ shielded system."

"Power requirements for human-tended surface outposts and bases are expected to range from 25 to 100 kWe during the early build-up phases."

"The most mass-efficient means of providing high power for surface missions is through the use of nuclear fission systems."