M
Mike Wehner
Guest
- NASA's InSight lander has a self-hammering probe that isn't doing what it's supposed to.
- The instrument, nicknamed "the mole," can't seem to get a grip on the soft martian soil, hindering its ability to dig to the depth it needs to collect useful data.
- NASA is continuing to work on getting the mole to work as intended, but
You've really got to hand it to NASA; the space agency definitely doesn't give up easily. The best example of that might be the ongoing saga of the Mars InSight lander which arrived on the red planet back in late 2018. The lander safely touched down and began conducting science, but one of its instruments has been acting up in a big way. The self-hammering probe known as the "mole" is supposed to be many feet deep in the planet by now, but it's still hanging out in its hole right near the surface.
The probe's inability to hammer itself deeper into the planet has been well chronicled, and NASA just revealed a new update that suggests things haven't really improved that much since the last time we checked in.
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NASA’s Mars ‘mole’ saga is getting sadder and sadder originally appeared on BGR.com on Tue, 7 Jul 2020 at 21:10:17 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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