Diggerland comes to Mars as boffins battle to save InSight's mole Boffins at NASA's JPL and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) have come up with a plan to save the stricken Mars InSight probe. As a reminder, the lander's self-hammering probe, aka the mole, is a key part of the Mars lander's science payload and is designed to record the amount of heat escaping from the interior of the red …
Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple, the tether that connects the Mole to the lander comes out of the rear side of the Mole and is a thin flat cable made of Kapton (and wires). So you have to be very careful not to press down on that with the end of the arm. You're also doing this based on camera images taken from the Lander or high up on the arm. So you need to be very precise with what your doing.
In the end the team have decided to go with "pinning" the Mole to the side of the hole, so that at least part of the Mole has good solid contact with the hole wall (and the arm will provide some friction on the other side). If you want full details check out the HP³ Blog (https://www.dlr.de/blogs/en/all-blog-posts/The-InSight-mission-logbook.aspx). The Hammering will restart soon, so fingers crossed!
(from an ex HP³ Team member..)
Moles are little and burrow by digging with big claws - that's how they get rid of stones and other minor obstructions. (there's a good description by Hills in The Great Escape!) If they hit an immovable obstruction they simply dig around/over/under it ...
Pile drivers use percussion to sink into the ground - big, massive percussion for a relatively small cross-section pile. On occasion they get stuck because they can't move or break through an obstruction at which point they retract the pile (if possible, otherwise they cut it off) and start again.
A screw type piler can clear waste better but can still get stuck even though it has hundreds of Hp behind it -at which point it retracts the drill and starts again.
Now, the only one in this list that works 100% reliably is the mole. The only one in this list that has no resemblance to the design on Mars is ...? Of course the lander could retract the impactor, move and try again ... oh, it's not designed to do that ...
Hey we tried putting a Mole into a space suit, but the bloody thing kept scratching up the suit, and putting holes in. It just couldnt seem to get the hang of using the claw holes provided. And boy let me tell you dont want to be cleaning out the space suit of a pissed off Mole. We had to shut the facility down just because of the smell!
A bit expensive admittedly. However, one that can possibly be fixed: negative results can be useful. How important is this particular mission anyway?
Given that the crust in this location is so hard, possibly a reusable and mobile drill should be utilized; the information might be of interest to early settlers on Mars if they find it extensive and prefer to build underground shelters.
Definitely seems more branding, less science.
Looks like they should have dialled before they dug. I could have told 'em they'd hit something hard on a barren, rocky planet.
Since they've already tried turning it on and off again, I don't have much hope, sadly. Good luck to 'em, though.
So lets get this right. You designed a device that can only be placed once, and then cant be retracted and placed again? How much harder woudl that have been? It reminds me of the old Messerschmidt Bubble Cars, which opened at the front to get in, and had no reverse gar, so if you drove into the garage and right up to the end wall, you were trapped for all eternity.
https://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/V/Vikings_search_for_life_on_Mars.html
Levin is suggesting that with modern computer techniques analyzing the data clearly shows a life signature.
Could inSight have hit a Martian shell from some long dead sea creature? Would explain a few things.
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