NASA declares Mars digger dead after two years

NASA announced Thursday that a “mole” on Mars has completed its mission after landing on the Red Planet nearly two years ago.

The mole – also called an excavator, drill, and probe – was built by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and deployed by NASA’s InSight lander. His goal was to drill 16 feet into Martian soil to take his temperature and … well, he never managed to do that.

The digger had only drilled 14 inches before he got stuck in the first month of his mission. Months later, in October 2019, NASA engineers planned to get the excavator back on track using a robotic excavator to help reload the 14 inches and support the excavator in its next attempt to dig 16 feet. The NASA team were convinced the probe was finally ready to go, but they were wrong.

NASA’s next idea in February 2020 was to have the InSight lander push the probe with its robotic arm.

It didn’t work either. After attempting to use the scoop on InSight’s robotic arm again on January 9, 2021, the probe made 500 more hammer blows with no progress. At this point, the team declared the probe dead.

“We’ve given him everything we’ve got, but Mars and our heroic mole remain incompatible,” DLR’s Tilman Spohn said in the NASA announcement.

There is good news, however. Spohn said work on this probe will benefit future missions because they have learned a lot on the surface of Mars.

Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA headquarters in Washington, said he was proud of the mission team – and his work was useful. “That’s why we take risks at NASA – we have to push the boundaries of technology to know what works and what doesn’t,” he said.

“In that sense, we have been successful: we have learned a lot that will benefit future missions to Mars and elsewhere,” Zurbuchen continued, “and we thank our German DLR partners for providing this instrument and for their collaboration.”