InSight’s ‘Mole’ is Now Completely buried! - Universe Today

It’s been a long road for InSight’s Mole.

While the lander’s other instruments are working fine and returning scientific data, the Mole has been struggling to hammer its way into the surface of the planet.

After much hard work and a lot of patience, the Mole has finally succeeded in burying itself all the way into the Marian regolith.

The Mole is a 16-inch long heat probe that hammers itself deep into the surface.

The heat transport part of the mission is the mole’s job.

But that hammering motion relies on friction between the mole and sides of its hole.

The duricrust around the mole prevents soil from falling into the mole’s hole as it hammers, and deprives the instrument from the necessary friction for hammering its way into Mars.

While InSight is primarily a NASA mission, the Mole was designed and built by the DLR (German Aerospace Center).

They’ve been working with NASA’s JPL, which has an engineering version of the Mole in a test-bed.

They’ve tried using the scoop on the end of InSight’s instrument arm to apply sideway pressure to the Mole, hoping to provide the necessary friction.

Today, NASA announced that the Mole was finally completely buried in the dirt.

We want to make sure there’s enough soil on top of the mole to enable it to dig on its own without any assistance from the arm,” Hudson said in a press release.

That’s reducing the power available to the entire mission.

He’s been writing a blog about the effort to get the mole working.

In today’s October 16th, 2020 entry, Spohn talked about the next steps, and how they’re working towards another “Free Mole Test.” The free mole test is when they let the mole try to hammer its way below the surface without assistance from the scoop.

Depending on the result of the backfilling, further actions to fill the pit will be planned before further hammering and another Free Mole Test will take place later on.”.

A drill would weigh far too much and would require far more power than the mole does.

Hopefully, the mole will eventually get to its working depth.

But without the mole and its heat transport readings, the InSight lander will never live up to its mission.