At Long Last, NASA's Probe Finally Digs in On Mars (popsci.com) 19
NASA unsticks its Martian digging probe by whacking it with a shovel. From a report: Every day, the InSight lander's suite of instruments sends back data proving that the Red Planet isn't really dead. Marsquakes rumble the seismometer. Swirling vortices register on onboard pressure sensor. And temperature sensors help track the weather and changing of the seasons. Despite the lander's successes, however, one gauge has met with resistance from the Martian environment while trying to carry out its mission. Something has stopped InSight's 15-inch digging probe, dubbed "the mole" for its burrowing prowess. Instead of diving deep into the Martian sand where it could take the planet's temperature, it's been stuck half-buried. An intercontinental team of MacGyvers has spent a year devising successively daring plans to get the mole digging again, but still it flounders on the surface. Now their final gambit -- directly pushing the mole into the soil -- has shown tentative signs of success, NASA announced Friday on Twitter.
The goal of the mole, which is the measurement probe of InSight's Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (or HP3), is to track the temperature variations of Mars itself. This heat comes from Mars's core, which, like Earth's core, remains warm from the planet's birth. By measuring it, researchers hope to learn about Mars's formation -- but from the rod-shaped mole's current position they can get readings only of the surface temperature. Mission planners hope to ideally reach 15 feet underground to escape the warming and cooling from the Martian seasons that would interfere with reading the planet's true temperature. A rock could be in the way, but the more likely culprit appears to be the Martian soil. Previous observations had led the German Aerospace Center engineers who designed the probe to expect that it would be digging through loose sand. They built the mole to bounce up and down like a jackhammer, sinking with each stroke and threading its way around any modestly sized rocks it encountered. But the probe has found soil that seems more dirt-like than sand-like; It sticks together and doesn't collapse around the mole to give it enough friction to dig. What the mole needs is a little nudge.
The goal of the mole, which is the measurement probe of InSight's Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (or HP3), is to track the temperature variations of Mars itself. This heat comes from Mars's core, which, like Earth's core, remains warm from the planet's birth. By measuring it, researchers hope to learn about Mars's formation -- but from the rod-shaped mole's current position they can get readings only of the surface temperature. Mission planners hope to ideally reach 15 feet underground to escape the warming and cooling from the Martian seasons that would interfere with reading the planet's true temperature. A rock could be in the way, but the more likely culprit appears to be the Martian soil. Previous observations had led the German Aerospace Center engineers who designed the probe to expect that it would be digging through loose sand. They built the mole to bounce up and down like a jackhammer, sinking with each stroke and threading its way around any modestly sized rocks it encountered. But the probe has found soil that seems more dirt-like than sand-like; It sticks together and doesn't collapse around the mole to give it enough friction to dig. What the mole needs is a little nudge.
Mars Jokes! (Score:1)
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That's my body you've got there, and I want it back.
--Total Recall
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This type of research on Mars is not a joke. What IS a joke is the shitheads here who think Musk is taking them to Mars to live in a nerd utopia. It ain't happening. Believing you can live on Mars for long periods of time is anti-Science.
What is this, Chucky Cheese? (Score:4, Funny)
So, they're playing whack-a-mole.
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John Henry wins again. (Score:2)
Or he would. Time to queue up Johnny Cash.
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Good plan. [youtube.com]
In very remotely related news ... (Score:2)
NASA unsticks its Martian digging probe by whacking it with a shovel.
On several occasions, I've unstuck a stuck/frozen hard drive by whacking the side of it with the handle of a screwdriver at power-on.
Sometimes simple approaches work well.
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Fonzie is that you?
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I've done that many times, though most of those times were back in the ST-506 days, and the remainder were PATA interface drives.
Is that still a thing?
Oblilgatory Armageddon quote (Score:2)
Rockhound:
We're in segment 202, lateral grid nine, site 15H32; give or take a few yards. Captain America here blew the landing by 26 miles!
mathematical mystery (Score:2)
" Now their final gambit -- directly pushing the mole into the soil -- "
Have you ever noticed that it's always the last thing you try that works? You can try three times or five times or, if you are Thomas Edison, 500 times and it's always the last one that works! (Unless you're a quitter, of course.) Must be some mathematical mystery.
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Have you ever noticed that it's always the last thing you try that works?
But that's not always the last thing you plan for, they have a bunch of contingency plans for things that don't work or go wrong that are mostly unused. It makes perfect sense to say that this is our final attempt, there's either nothing more to try or nothing more to try with. And since you generally go with the plans that are likely to work first, the last ones tend to be wild gambles because they're still marginally better than just giving up.
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Not only that, but in an amazing coincidence that must be supernatural, I have discovered that when I look for stuff, I always find it in the last place I look!
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Welcome to Slashdot, Mr. Trump.
metric anyone? (Score:2)
Inches? Feet?
We'd better get the king out and measure his foot again, I think it may have gotten smaller in his old age.