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The 'mole' on Mars from NASA's InSight lander may be stuck again - Space.com
Jul 08, 2020 1 min, 7 secs

The going continues to be tough for InSight's burrowing heat probe.

The Martian mole is underground again, but it may still not be able to dig on its own.

The burrowing heat probe onboard NASA's InSight Mars lander, affectionately known as "the mole," was designed to hammer itself at least 10 feet (3 meters) underground.

The mole, whose official name is the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3), recently got underground once again, thanks to a push from the scoop on the end of InSight's robotic arm.

"Images taken by InSight during a Saturday, June 20, hammering session show bits of soil jostling within the scoop — possible evidence that the mole had begun bouncing in place, knocking the bottom of the scoop," NASA officials wrote in an update Tuesday (July 7).

The InSight team can't fully assess the situation at the moment, because the scoop is blocking the mole from the view of a camera on the lander's arm.

InSight's handlers plan to move the scoop out of the way over the next few weeks to get a good look at the mole and its burrow, NASA officials said. .

It's the dusty season in InSight's locale just north of the Martian equator, and mission engineers want to get a better sense of the lander's power supply.

The InSight team is also precisely tracking the lander's position on Mars.

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