NASA’s InSight lander is winning the battle to free its stuck drill

By Georgina Torbet March 16, 2020

Finally, some good news in this dark time, and it comes from another planet: Over on Mars, NASA’s InSight lander is finally making progress toward freeing its stuck drill.

The InSight lander has a suite of instruments including a heat probe for measuring temperatures, but the probe needs to be placed below the Martian surface to take accurate readings. So that requires the lander to drill into the soil using a piece of hardware called a mole, which hammers downward. However, the mole got stuck in the soil almost exactly one year ago, and NASA has been trying various techniques to free it since then. The problem is that the mole kept popping out of the soil, due to the soil not having the degree of friction that was expected.

Recommended Videos

The latest plan was to use the InSight lander’s robotic arm to push down on the end of the mole and push it deeper into the soil. The scientists believed that pushing on the end of the mole would provide sufficient force to hold it in place so it could “grab onto” the slippery soil and resume digging. And it seems to be working.

The official NASA InSight Twitter account shared an update on the status of InSight and its mole on Friday, March 13, and announced that progress was being made. It also shared a before and after image showing the mole sticking out of the ground in the before, and having moved downward slightly in the after image.

A bit of good news from #Mars: our new approach of using the robotic arm to push the mole appears to be working! The teams @NASAJPL/@DLR_en are excited to see the images and plan to continue this approach over the next few weeks. 💪 #SaveTheMole

FAQ: https://t.co/wnhp7c1gPT pic.twitter.com/5wYyn7IwVo

— NASA InSight (@NASAInSight) March 13, 2020

In a follow-up tweet, the team confirmed that the two images were taken approximately 30 minutes apart. However, the actual movement of the mole was fairly fast, requiring just a few minutes. The movement was achieved after “a couple of minutes of hammering” which involved a total of 25 hammer strokes in addition to the pushing force from InSight’s arm.

Now, the team will continue using this technique of pushing down on the mole with the robotic arm for several weeks, hopefully continuing to make progress. While doing so, they will also continue studying the soil that InSight is sitting on. Unlike the loose, sandy soils which were found on Mars by the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, the soil under InSight seems quite different and could tell scientists more about the history and geology of the planet.

Topics

Georgina Torbet

Space Writer

Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…

Space

How Perseverance is dealing with its pebble problem

NASA's Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image using its onboard SHERLOC WATSON imager. The camera is located on the turret at the end of the rover's robotic arm. The image was acquired on Jan. 13, 2022 (Sol 320).

The Perseverance rover, currently exploring Mars's Jezero Crater, has run into a challenge when collecting samples from the planet. It recently attempted to collect a sample from a rock called Issole, but sensors detected an anomaly during the collecting process and the rover had to pause its activities.

"This is only the 6th time in human history a sample has been cored from a rock on a planet other than Earth, so when we see something anomalous going on, we take it slow," wrote Louise Jandura, Chief Engineer for Sampling & Caching at NASA/JPL, in an update.

Space

NASA’s InSight put into safe mode during Martian dust storm

This selfie of NASA’s InSight lander is a mosaic made up of 14 images taken on March 15 and April 11 – the 106th and 133rd Martian days, or sols, of the mission – by the spacecraft Instrument Deployment Camera located on its robotic arm.

Mars is a tough environment for many reasons: It's cold, the atmosphere is extremely thin, and the planet experiences epic dust storms which can cover everything within a region in a coating of particles. One such dust storm has required that the NASA InSight lander be placed into safe mode in order to preserve its battery power.

Dust storms can sometimes encompass the entire planet, but this particular storm is regional to where the lander is located. The biggest threat that the dust storm poses to the lander is by covering up its solar panels and thereby reducing the amount of energy the lander can collect. Not only does dust accumulate on the panels, but it also blocks sunlight coming through the atmosphere. Without enough sunlight reaching the solar panels to recharge its batteries, the lander mission is at risk -- like the dust storms which lead to the demise of the Opportunity rover in 2018.

Space

NASA’s top skywatching tips for January include a meteor shower

how to photograph perseid meteor shower streak in the night sky

NASA focuses on four particular treats for folks peering skyward in January.

What's Up: January 2022 Skywatching Tips from NASA
Winter Circle
Kick-off 2022 by marveling at the stars of the Winter Circle (also known as the Winter Hexagon) as they shine brightly in the night sky.