NASA plug on Mars Mole at InSight Lander

NASA has pulled the plug on the Mars mold at InSight lander, more than two years after the surface rubbed at Elysium Planitia. The Mars mole heat probe built in Germany could never penetrate a hard surface outside the landing site to make the types of measurements necessary to make the first real impression. give planetary scientists a creation of Martian interiors.

For nearly two years, the InSight, short for Interior Study using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and a Heat Transport mole probe has been trying to dig into a Martian surface to measure internal temperatures. take over the planet, says NASA. But the team added that he didn’t expect the uproar of shaving the spike like a spike he needed to turn it deep enough, the team notes.

As part of the spacecraft’s Heat Flow and Physical Buildings (HP3) Package, the mole was projected to be a self-hammer probe thrown nearly 16 feet (five meters) below the surface of Mars. This would have allowed planet scientists to better understand whether the interior of Mars is completely different from our own Earth or Moon.

“We have given him everything we have, but Mars and our heroic mole are irrelevant,” HP3 chief analyst Tilman Spohn of DLR said in a statement. “Fortunately, we have learned a great deal that will benefit future missions that seek to dig into the subtext. ”

The mole itself is a 16-inch-long spike designed to slide with a ribbonlike tent that protrudes from the spacecraft, NASA said. The idea was that temperature sensors are embedded next to the connection to measure the planet’s internal heat.

But InSight landed in an area with unusually thick duricrust, or a layer of cement soil, NASA reports. Instead of being loose and like sand, as would be expected, the dirt hedgehogs stick together, the group said.

Unfortunately, to work properly, the mole needs to rub off the soil to travel down. Without it, NASA says, a recall from the self-hammer act causes it to just kick in its place. Surprisingly, it is a loose soil, this duricrust is not like a cement that InSight has encountered at its landing site, which would better deliver the friction that necessary as it falls around the moor.

The landing site at Elysium Planitia, a wide, equatorial volcanic range, was chosen in part because of the small number of visible rocks, resulting in a large number of large underground rocks. Designed to measure heat flowing from the planet once the mole has dug at least 10 feet deep, the mole is strong enough to pierce small rocks. out of the way, says NASA.

But after constant efforts to help the mole in their actions over two years using the spacecraft’s robotic arm in ways he never expected, the team realized they were in a win-win situation.

At the same time, the rest of the InSight instruments work and take data. In fact, NASA says the mission plans to employ the robotic arm in burying the tent that carries data and power between the lawyer and the InSight seismometer, which has more than 480 marsquakes. to record. Burying it will help reduce temperature changes that have created cracking and popping sounds in seismic data, the team notes.

InSight’s own mission was recently extended to the end of next year. Along with hunting for marsquakes, the lawyer hosts a radio test that collects data to determine if the planet ‘s heart is melting or hard, says NASA. And InSight weather sensors are able to provide some of the most accurate geological data ever collected on Mars, the group said. Along with weather instruments aboard NASA’s Curiosity rover and the Perseverance rover, which will land on Feb. 18, the team says the three spacecraft will create the first epistemological network on another planet.

Could the problem be just like a normal rock?

“We don’t know for sure, because we can’t see underground,” Spohn said in a statement. “[But] there is also a chance that we hit a rock. ”