At Last! NASA InSight's “Mole” Is Out of Sight, Below the Surface of Mars - SciTechDaily

NASA’s InSight retracted its robotic arm on October 3, 2020, revealing where the spike-like “mole” is trying to burrow into Mars.

The copper-colored ribbon attached to the mole has sensors to measure the planet’s heat flow.

In the coming months, the arm will scrape and tamp down soil on top of the mole to help it dig.

Now that the heat probe is just below the Martian surface, InSight’s arm will scoop some additional soil on top to help it keep digging so it can take Mars’ temperature.

NASA’s InSight lander continues working to get its “mole” — a 16-inch-long (40-centimeter-long) pile driver and heat probe — deep below the surface of Mars.

The mole was designed so that loose soil would flow around it, providing friction against its outer hull so that it can dig deeper; without this friction, the mole just bounces in place as it hammers into the ground.

This footage from August 19, 2019, shows a replica of InSight scraping soil with a scoop on the end of its robotic arm in a test lab at JPL.

A replica of the “mole” — the lander’s self-hammering heat probe — comes in to view as the scoop moves to the left.

On Mars, InSight will scrape and tamp down soil on top of the mole to help it dig.

Now that the mole is fully embedded in the soil, they will use the scoop to scrape additional soil on top of it, tamping down this soil to help provide more friction.

The mole is formally called the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package, or HP3, and was built and provided to NASA by the German Space Agency (DLR).

DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland.

October 14, 2020

October 14, 2020

October 14, 2020