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A Martian “mole” will stop its valiant attempts to dig on the red planet.
After landing in 2018, NASA’s InSight spacecraft’s thermal probe, or “mole,” processed friction issues as investigators scrambled to learn more about the internal heat sources powering Mars. However, when the mole burrowed, it bounced off the regolith (or the ground) with unexpected hardness.
NASA announced On Thursday, January 14, the mole built by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) would abandon its historic mission to deploy the first underground mole to Mars.
The decision was announced days after an external scientific review panel – considering a routine NASA request to extend InSight’s mission based on its scientific output – publicly approved the extension of the mission, but asked the agency to continue the work of the mole with a lower priority. The review panel report also noted that InSight would likely go out of power before the end of its newly extended mission in December 2022, unless certain instruments are no longer prioritized.
Mars InSight in photos: NASA mission to probe the heart of the red planet
InSight’s last attempt to push the mole underground was on January 9. With the help of ground controllers on Earth, the mole moved about an inch (2-3 cm) below the surface, and the team used a shovel on the spacecraft’s robotic arm. “to scrape the earth off the probe and pack it down to provide additional friction,” NASA said in the same announcement.
Controllers ordered InSight to perform 500 hammer blows to drive the mole in, but the probe did not budge from its shallow perch. The mission originally required InSight to deploy sensors once the mole was 10 feet below the surface, but the mole never exceeded a few inches.
“We’ve given it everything we’ve got, but Mars and our heroic mole remain incompatible,” DLR’s Tilman Spohn, principal investigator of the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package instrument which includes the mole, said in the release from the DLR. NASA. “Fortunately, we’ve learned a lot that will benefit future missions that attempt to dig underground,” he added.
“What we’ve attempted to do – dig so deep with such a small device – is unprecedented,” said Troy Hudson, a scientist and engineer with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who led the mole’s efforts, in the same release from NASA. “Having had the opportunity to take advantage of [effort] all the way to the end is the biggest reward. “
Future missions to Mars will want to move underground for applications such as accessing water ice or to chase microbial life below the surface, NASA noted. The reason InSight failed to excavate the Martian surface is due to the “unexpected properties” of the soil, said the agency, which has proven to be more difficult to pass through than material encountered on two previous missions. on Mars.
Although the mole did not achieve its primary purpose, the team behind the probe learned other lessons from the experience. The team instructed InSight to use its arm and shovel in ways engineers never intended, such as using these tools to push and descend on the mole.
This hard-earned experience will come in handy when InSight’s robotic arm buries the tether that sends data and energy to the craft’s seismometer. Once the tether is under the Martian regolith, it will be better protected from temperature changes that affect the quality of the seismic data. Yet despite such challenges, InSight has recorded more than 480 earthquakes after about two Earth years on the Red Planet, NASA said.
InSight’s extended mission will not only include earthquake monitoring, but the craft will also collect data via a radio experiment to find out whether the core of the planet is solid or liquid. Weather sensors will also help scientists better understand weather conditions on Mars, as well as ongoing data from NASA. Curiosity rover mission (which deployed meteorological instruments in 2012) and NASA Perseverance rover, is expected to land on Mars on February 18.
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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