NASA ceases efforts to deploy Mars InSight heat flow probe - SpaceNews

WASHINGTON — After nearly two years of struggles, NASA has abandoned efforts to deploy a heat flow probe on its InSight lander into the surface of Mars.

14 statement, NASA said that a final effort to hammer the “mole” into the surface of Mars Jan.

The mole performed 500 hammer strokes, trying to drive itself into the surface, but remained in place just two to three centimeters below the surface.

“We’ve given it everything we’ve got, but Mars and our heroic mole remain incompatible,” said Tilman Spohn of the German space agency DLR, the principal investigator of what is formally known as the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3), in a NASA statement.

While those efforts were successful in getting the mole completely beneath the surface, and covered by a few centimeters of regolith, additional hammering efforts failed to make any progress, leading to the decision to leave the mole where it is.

At the time NASA said that extended mission “may continue deployment (at low priority)” of the mole, but didn’t discuss how long those efforts would continue.