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Mars NASA News

Mars InSight's 'Mole' Is Moving Again 35

Posted by BeauHD from the sometimes-all-you-need-is-a-little-push dept.
A reader shares a report from NASA: NASA's InSight spacecraft has used its robotic arm to help its heat probe, known as "the mole," dig nearly 2 centimeters (3/4 of an inch) over the past week. While modest, the movement is significant: Designed to dig as much as 16 feet (5 meters) underground to gauge the heat escaping from the planet's interior, the mole has only managed to partially bury itself since it started hammering in February 2019. The recent movement is the result of a new strategy, arrived at after extensive testing on Earth, which found that unexpectedly strong soil is holding up the mole's progress. The mole needs friction from surrounding soil in order to move: Without it, recoil from its self-hammering action will cause it to simply bounce in place. Pressing the scoop on InSight's robotic arm against the mole, a new technique called "pinning," appears to provide the probe with the friction it needs to continue digging.

Since Oct. 8, 2019, the mole has hammered 220 times over three separate occasions. Images sent down from the spacecraft's cameras have shown the mole gradually progressing into the ground. It will take more time -- and hammering -- for the team to see how far the mole can go. Engineers continue to test what would happen if the mole were to sink beneath the reach of the robotic arm. If it stops making progress, they might scrape soil on top of the mole, adding mass to resist the mole's recoil. If no other options exist, they would consider pressing the scoop down directly on the top of the mole while trying to avoid the sensitive tether there; the tether provides power to and relays data from the instrument.
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Mars InSight's 'Mole' Is Moving Again More

Mars InSight's 'Mole' Is Moving Again

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  • Pinning down a tool that is bouncing from its percussive movements...

    Wow... who came up with this? That's real Star Trek technology right there.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I'm sure NASA did their homework so perhaps someone can explain how this happened.

      I mean how did they get as far as sending something to Mars that apparently can't cope with slightly denser than expected soil? Wouldn't you want to send something that is way over-specced for task so it can handle this kind of situation?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

        Well, over-speccing also means more weight...

        I mean shit happens, I'm not laughing because of that. It happens to me every time I fix something... there are few projects where I have all the tools I need on the first try or even all the parts... So I'm not gonna judge people who work on other planets by proxy.

        However the way it's formulated....

        "We encountered that the cutting tool we used was not able to cut the whole depth so we came up with this new technique we call 'taking a sledge-hammer to it.' It is

        • They are not hammering on it, they press the scoop at the soil next to the mole so that the friction of the soil increases. That is the part that is innovative. Hammering on it with the scoop to drive it down as you suggest would probably damage it.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

            The mole is hammering. And it bounces from the hammering, because it isn't able to anchor itself properly. So they use the robot arm to press against it to stop it from bouncing.

            So basically what you would do with a hammer drill.

        • I read the comment that they're not hammering it. Nevertheless, I'm going to respond as if that comment weren't there, because Navy.

          When I was in the Navy (before most of you were born), we had a saying: if at first you don't succeed, use a bigger hammer.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by joh ( 27088 )

        We never got our hands on even the smallest sample of Mars soil. All we know comes from remote measurements and all tests of such devices have to be done with artificial Mars soil that may or may not fit the real thing.

        And yes, a core drill or whatever would make short work of any soil, but mass, size and power is a problem with these rather small probes and rovers.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

            by F.Ultra ( 1673484 )
            It's "political" in a difference sense. Since we have high hopes that we could find life on Mars we must take every single precaution not to spread earth life to Mars and it have turned out that performing proper sterilization is quite hard (there are unfortunately microbes that can survive the entire trip on the outside of a rocket) so we are nowhere near being able to send a SUV sized vehicle there.

            • Right? The earliest we could possibly launch something like that is... Oh, 2011?

              • You are seriously underestimating the effort needed to properly sterilize these things. There are some evidence that the opportunity and curiosity wasn't properly sterilized for example, and those are way way easier to sterilize than something in the SUV size.

          • Re:Pinnacle of technology (Score:5, Insightful)

            by stinky wizzleteats ( 552063 ) on Friday October 18, 2019 @12:12PM (#59322590) Homepage Journal

            has anyone proposed landing a nuclear powered SUV sized probe?

            You literally just described the Curiosity rover.

      • One of the things about exploring an unexplored world, is that there are a lot of unknown variables. To compound this, we need to send robots and probes to do the work, These type of problems is a good reason to explain why we should consider manned missions to explore mars. Being that mars is 20 light minutes away, remote control is difficult. A manned mission means we can do a lot of different things, plus humans can think on its feet. So such a tool meant to dig into the ground, is obviously stuck, w

        • These type of problems is a good reason to explain why we should consider manned missions to explore mars

          Instead of a manned mission, we could have sent a much more powerful tool instead for a fraction of the cost.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pascoea ( 968200 )

          why we should consider manned missions to explore mars

          That didn't work out so well for Matt Damon. Poor guy ended up left for dead again.

    • It's not pinning it down, they are pinning it from the side (look at the animated gif from TFA) to increase the friction (I erroneously wrote previously that they pinned the soil next to the mole to increase the friction but that seams to be wrong).

  • Call me when they spot an actual Martian mole moving. Or even a dead one. Iâ(TM)ll settle for a mole fossil. Or any fossil.

  • Just put a small bomb on board..
  • Seems like someone forgot that when you're drilling the friction is proportional the the force being placed against the soil no matter what planet you're on, but Martian gravity is much lighter than Earth so the mole is simply too light to keep it from bouncing around and compensate with its weight - I'm willing to bet it's 63% lighter than it should be for the force it's producing - a number I picked totally at random and not connected with Mars' gravity being 37% of that of Earth... But yeah, blame the so
    • You really believe that NASA and DPL don't know about the lesser gravity on Mars. Really? (not to mention that you just ignored the fact that the mole had successfully drilled a bit into the soil already before it stopped showing that Yes they indeed knew about the gravity).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
        This coming from a team that built something that doesn't work and sent it to Mars. Yes, anything is possible.

        • It worked just fine until it hit the problem and now it works just fine again. Still don't see your point.

          Apparently the soil in the area is not like any other soil that NASA have experienced on mars before:

          The Mole relies on friction between itself and the sides of the hole its creating to hammer itself further into the ground.

          But the soil where it's operating is too crusty and isn't falling into the hole. NASA describes it as a kind of duricrust, a cemented soil that's different than other soil on Mars, and a type they didn't expect to encounter. The duricrust as about 5 to 10 centimeters (2 to 4 inches) thick, hidden by the loose surface material above it.

          When they deployed the Mole, they had no way of knowing the duricrust would be there. Rather than flowing into the Mole's cavity and filling up space and providing the necessary friction, the duricrust is stubbornly refusing to help the Mole penetrate.

  • 10/23 is nearly on us. I guess even NASA could not pass up the chance to tie an announcement about their project, which happens to be named after a different kind of mole, given the timing of the announcement. Nerds! ;-)

  • that manned spaceflight is a waste of time and we should rely on probes I point them to situations like this. A great deal of time, energy and engineering expertise has been put into accomplishing a task that a dude with a post hole digger or hand auger could have done in minutes. I'm not knocking the efforts of the NASA engineers. You have to come up with really clever solutions when your drill is a million miles away and has the worst input lag in the universe. What I'm getting at is science becomes infin

    • What I'm getting at is science becomes infinitely easier and the mission is much more productive when there are people there operating the experiments

      Yes, after you've done the infinitely harder job of getting people there, some things do get easier.

  • dig nearly 2 centimeters (3/4 of an inch) over the past week

    Can we stick to the standard furlongs per fortnight please?

  • I'll tell you what the problem is. They didn't test it in my front yard. A couple weeks ago, my wife asked me to put some signs in our front yard for a local election. You know the kind that have to 1/8" wire legs, and you push them down in the ground, and a couple months later pull them out? Well...I pushed, and I pushed, and all I succeeded in doing was bending the wires.

    So then I got a spike or something with a pointy tip, and tried hammering that down. No luck.

    Finally I got out a chisel, the kind w

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