NASA’s billion dollar InSight robot is struggling to dig into the surface of Mars – Daily Mail

NASA’s billion dollar InSight robot is struggling to dig into the surface of Mars and is simply bouncing up and down on the groundNASA InSight has only dug through 14 inches of Mars’ surfaceIt’s designed to reach at least 16ft to study how heat escapes the interiorHeat probe is unable to remain stable while digging and is bouncing aroundThe rover has been using a scoop, but cannot use the full strength of its arm By Stacy Liberatore For Dailymail.com Published: 19:10 EDT, 4 October 2019 | Updated: 19:18 EDT, 4 October 2019 NASA’s InSight rover has provided the American space agency with weather reports, images and other interesting findings on Mars – but has struggled to probe its surface.In nearly eight months, the land rover has only dug through 14 inches of the red planet’s surface, even though it was engineered to reach at least 16 feet to study how heat escapes from the interior.This blunder has come down to InSight’s ‘mole’ heat probe’s inability to keep its footing in the soil – NASA believes the device is just bouncing in place.Scroll down for video  In nearly eight months, the land rover has only dug through 14 inches of the red planet’s surface, even though it was engineered to reach at least 16 feet in order to study how heat escapes from the interiorInSight, NASA’s $1 billion rover, made landing on Mars in November 2018 after traveling through space for seven months.And although it has been a key player in the Mars mission, it has failed to explore the planet’s interior.However, NASA believes to have found why the self-hammering probe is not performing well and has a plan in place.’We’re going to try pressing the side of the scoop against the mole, pinning it to the wall of its hole,’ Sue Smrekar, InSight deputy principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told CNN. This blunder has come down to InSight’s ‘mole’ heat probe inability to keep its footing in the soil – NASA believes the device is just bouncing in place’This might increase friction enough to keep it moving forward when mole hammering resumes.’The team has also found that the location where InSight is currently digging is nothing like it has encountered on the mission, as it is cemented together and much thicker.’All we know about the soil is what we can see in images InSight sends us,’ said Tilman Spohn, principal investigator for the experiment. ‘Since we can’t bring the soil to the mole, maybe we can bring the mole to the soil by pinning it in the hole.’ Over the last few months, the team used a scoop (pictured) on the robotic arm to push and poke at the soil, hoping it would collapse the soil. But the arm can’t use its full strength to push INSIGHT’S THREE KEY INSTRUMENTS The lander that could reveal how Earth was formedThree key instruments will allow the InSight lander to ‘take the pulse’ of the red planet:Seismometer: The InSight lander carries a seismometer, SEIS, that listens to the pulse of Mars. The seismometer records the waves traveling through the interior structure of a planet. Studying seismic waves tells us what might be creating the waves. On Mars, scientists suspect that the culprits may be marsquakes, or meteorites striking the surface. Heat probe: InSight’s heat flow probe, HP3, burrows deeper than any other scoops, drills or probes on Mars before it. It will investigate how much heat is still flowing out of Mars. Radio antennas: Like Earth, Mars wobbles a little as it rotates around its axis. To study this, two radio antennas, part of the RISE instrument, track the location of the lander very precisely. This helps scientists test the planet’s reflexes and tells them how the deep interior structure affects the planet’s motion around the Sun. InSight has been using a scoop on its robotic arm of the past few months with the hopes of moving more soil, but the arm is unable to use its full strength with the attachment.  Over the last few months, the team used a scoop on the robotic arm to push and poke at the soil, hoping it would collapse the soil. But the arm can’t use its full strength to push. ‘We’re asking the arm to punch above its weight,’ said Ashitey Trebi-Ollennu, the lead arm engineer at JPL. ‘The arm can’t push the soil the way a person can. ‘This would be easier if it could, but that’s just not the arm we have.’
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