NASA’s Insight Lander Has Finally Managed to Drill the Surface of Mars

The mole is the nickname for the instrument that’s known as the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package on the InSight lander mission from NASA.

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Tau.Neutrino said:

NASA’s Insight Lander Has Finally Managed to Drill the Surface of Mars

The mole is the nickname for the instrument that’s known as the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package on the InSight lander mission from NASA.

more…

That’s great news. I’d given it up for dead.

> We still need to see if the mole can dig on its own

Oh. I think I need more information. The news is still too new to appear on NASA’s web pages. Ah, here we go. https://www.cnet.com/news/nasa-insight-lander-finally-pushes-its-burrowing-mole-into-mars/ The mole can dig when the robotic arm is leaning down on the top of it. “This bit of good news suggests the mole’s problem isn’t a rock getting in its way, but rather the makeup of the martian soil at InSight’s landing spot. The probe simply hasn’t been able to get enough friction to progress downward.”

There’s a gif showing it digging at https://twitter.com/NASAInSight/status/1268208324261982208

More from Insight, https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/news-and-events/news/

22 Feb 2020. https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8613/a-year-of-surprising-science-from-nasas-insight-mars-mission/?site=insight”:https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8613/a-year-of-surprising-science-from-nasas-insight-mars-mission/?site=insight

“It took months after InSight’s landing in November 2018 before they recorded the first seismic event. By the end of 2019, SEIS was detecting about two seismic signals a day, suggesting that InSight just happened to touch down at a particularly quiet time.” “Mars trembles more often — but also more mildly — than expected. SEIS has found more than 450 seismic signals to date, the vast majority of which are probably quakes (as opposed to data noise created by environmental factors, like wind). The largest quake was about magnitude 4.0 in size — not quite large enough” to penetrate below the crust.

The two largest quakes detected by NASA’s InSight appear to have originated in a region of Mars called Cerberus Fossae, pictured below.

“The magnetometer has found that the signals are 10 times stronger than what was predicted based on data from orbiting spacecraft that study the area. The measurements of these orbiters are averaged over a couple of hundred miles, whereas InSight’s measurements are more local. Surface rocks at InSight’s location are too young to have been magnetized by the planet’s former field, so this magnetism must be coming from ancient rocks underground”

Magnetometer “signals change over time. The measurements vary by day and night; they also tend to pulse around midnight.”

“InSight’s cameras have yet to see dust devils.”. Despite this, “the spacecraft’s weather sensors have detected thousands of passing whirlwinds, which are called dust devils when they pick up grit and become visible. This site has more whirlwinds than any other place we’ve landed on Mars while carrying weather sensors”

“InSight has two radios: one for regularly sending and receiving data, and a more powerful radio designed to measure the “wobble” of Mars as it spins. This X-band radio, also known as the Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment (RISE), can eventually reveal whether the planet’s core is solid or liquid. A solid core would cause Mars to wobble less than a liquid one would.”

There are very good physical reasons why this is still unknown. The pressure at the centre of Mars is accurately known but there’s no way to accurately measure or predict the temperature of the centre of Mars so far. It depends on how much radioactive material was buried there when it formed. It also depends on material properties at these high pressures and temperatures.

Excellent