[ad_1]
By MARCIA DUNN AP Aerospace Writer
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – NASA declared the Mars digger dead Thursday after failing to go deep into the Red Planet to take his temperature.
German scientists spent two years trying to get their thermal probe, dubbed the mole, to pierce the Martian crust. But the 16-inch-long (40 centimeters) device that is part of NASA’s InSight lander couldn’t gain enough friction in the red dirt. It was supposed to bury 16 feet (5 meters) in Mars, but only drilled a few feet (about half a meter).
The article continues below …
After one last unsuccessful attempt to hammer each other over the weekend with 500 hits, the team stopped.
“We gave him everything we have, but Mars and our heroic mole remain incompatible,” said Tilman Spohn of the German Space Agency, the lead scientist in the experiment.
This effort will benefit future Mars excavation efforts, he added in a statement. According to NASA, astronauts may one day have to dig in Mars, looking for frozen water to drink or make fuel, or signs of past microscopic life.
The design for the mole was based on Martian soil examined by a previous spacecraft. It was nothing like the lumpy dirt encountered this time.
InSight’s French seismometer, meanwhile, has recorded nearly 500 earthquakes, while the lander’s weather station provides daily reports. On Tuesday, the high was 17 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 8 degrees Celsius) and the low was minus 56 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 49 degrees Celsius) at the Elysee Planitia de Mars, an equatorial plain.
The lander recently got a two-year extension for its science work, which now lasts until the end of 2022.
InSight landed on Mars in November 2018. It will be joined by NASA’s latest rover, Perseverance, which will attempt a touchdown on February 18. The Curiosity rover has been traveling in Mars since 2012.
___
The Associated Press’s Department of Health and Science receives support from the Department of Science Education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Related stories from Oil City News:
[ad_2]
Source link