Skip to main content

Time has run out for InSight to bury its heat probe in the Martian soil

In this artist's concept of NASA's InSight lander on Mars, layers of the planet's subsurface can be seen below, and dust devils can be seen in the background.
In this artist’s concept of NASA’s InSight lander on Mars, layers of the planet’s subsurface can be seen below, and dust devils can be seen in the background. IPGP/Nicolas Sarter

Poor little InSight lander. NASA’s explorer on Mars has spent nearly two years trying to bury its heat probe in the uncooperative Martian soil, which turned out to have a slightly different amount of friction than was expected. After trying fixes of all kinds, NASA has now announced it is giving up on getting the probe buried and operational.

But it’s not all bad news for InSight, as the lander’s other instruments are working well and collecting fascinating data on the Martian weather and the existence of marsquakes. The mission has recently been extended so the lander will continue operations for another two years.

Recommended Videos

The problems with the heat probe began in March 2019, when the self-digging part of the probe called the mole stopped its progress digging into the soil to place the probe beneath the surface. At first, it was thought that the mole may have hit a rock, but it later turned out that the problem was with the soil itself. The mole uses the friction of the soil to burrow into the ground, but the soil in this particular region has been compacted into a hard form called duracrust. That meant that whenever the mole tried to dig, it was pushed back out of the hole.

NASA engineers tried a variety of fixes including using the lander’s robotic arm to pin the mole in place and using the scoop on the end of the arm to push on the end of the mole to force it down into the soil. There was hope that these efforts might have worked in October last year, when the mole was successfully buried a few centimeters beneath the surface. But it hasn’t been able to make any progress since then, so the NASA team is now finally calling a halt to attempts to fix the problem.

“We’ve given it everything we’ve got, but Mars and our heroic mole remain incompatible,” said Tilman Spohn, principal investigator of InSight’s Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument of which the mole is a part, in a statement. “Fortunately, we’ve learned a lot that will benefit future missions that attempt to dig into the subsurface.”

Even though it has had problems, InSight has made remarkable discoveries including learning about marsquakes and collecting data that was processed into the sounds of Mars. As its mission continues, it will work as a weather station along with the two rovers Curiosity and Perseverance to help scientists understand more about the complex Martian weather system.

For now, those at NASA are taking the mole’s challenges in their stride. “We are so proud of our team who worked hard to get InSight’s mole deeper into the planet. It was amazing to see them troubleshoot from millions of miles away,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science in the statement.

“This is why we take risks at NASA — we have to push the limits of technology to learn what works and what doesn’t. In that sense, we’ve been successful: We’ve learned a lot that will benefit future missions to Mars and elsewhere, and we thank our German partners from DLR [German Aerospace Center] for providing this instrument and for their collaboration.”

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
NASA has wonderful news for its plucky Mars helicopter
NASA's Ingenuity helicopter.

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter made history in April 2021 when it became the first aircraft to achieve powered, controlled flight on another planet.

With Mars’ atmosphere much thinner than Earth’s, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) weren’t certain if they could build a machine capable of obtaining lift on the red planet, let alone creating one able to fly reliably. But with its long, fast-spinning blades, Ingenuity has exceeded expectations, flying over long distances during multiple flights.

Read more
Mars lander InSight is awake from safe mode after 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.

NASA's InSight lander on Mars has returned to normal operations after a break of around two weeks due to a regional dust storm. The lander is currently active, but its science instruments will remain off until the full effects of the dust storm can be ascertained.

Mars is the dustiest place in the solar system, with a combination of low gravity due to its small size and thin atmosphere with many air currents due to changes in temperature. That means that dust can easily be whipped up off the surface and cause regional or even global dust storms which researchers are only beginning to understand. But more than a meteorological oddity, this has a direct effect on machines on the surface of the planet.

Read more
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.

Read more