NASA’s InSight mission to Mars has been successful on a number of fronts, but there’s no denying that there’s been one very big disappointment: the mole. A self-burying instrument designed to hammer itself up to 16 feet into the surface of Mars has repeatedly fallen well short of this goal. In fact, at the moment it’s basically just sitting on the surface.
The InSight team believes that the soil on the planet’s surface is simply too powdery and loose for the instrument to gain traction and pull itself deeper. To fix this, the team used InSight’s robotic arm to push against the edge of the hole, giving the probe a better grip. This new technique appeared to work for a bit, but it wasn’t long before Mars barfed the probe back up. Bummer.
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NASA is desperately trying to get its Mars mole digging again originally appeared on BGR.com on Sun, 23 Feb 2020 at 13:06:15 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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