InSight’s mole has popped out of its hole
Click for full image.
In a setback for its renewed digging effort, the mole drill on InSight has apparently bounced out of its drilled hole during the most recent drilling, soon after engineers had increased the rate of hammer strokes.
The image to the right shows the mole, the white cylinder on the left, with the scoop of the robot arm mostly covering the hole in its effort to pin the mole in position.
“While digging this weekend the mole backed about halfway out of the ground,” the mission announced via a pair of tweets Oct. 27. “Preliminary assessment points to unexpected soil properties as the main reason.”
…The mission added that one possibility is soil is falling in front of the mole, filling the hole. “Team continues to look over the data and will have a plan in the next few days.”
Without question the alien and fluffy properties of the soil appears to be the problem. Based on how the mole is leaning, I wonder if the left wall of the hole began to widen and collapse, as had the rest of the hole during initial drilling, thus defeating the purpose of the robot arm’s effort to pin the mole in place.
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Click for full image.
In a setback for its renewed digging effort, the mole drill on InSight has apparently bounced out of its drilled hole during the most recent drilling, soon after engineers had increased the rate of hammer strokes.
The image to the right shows the mole, the white cylinder on the left, with the scoop of the robot arm mostly covering the hole in its effort to pin the mole in position.
“While digging this weekend the mole backed about halfway out of the ground,” the mission announced via a pair of tweets Oct. 27. “Preliminary assessment points to unexpected soil properties as the main reason.”
…The mission added that one possibility is soil is falling in front of the mole, filling the hole. “Team continues to look over the data and will have a plan in the next few days.”
Without question the alien and fluffy properties of the soil appears to be the problem. Based on how the mole is leaning, I wonder if the left wall of the hole began to widen and collapse, as had the rest of the hole during initial drilling, thus defeating the purpose of the robot arm’s effort to pin the mole in place.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
So basically they drop a pointy unit onto the ground. Inside is a solenoid that tries to knock the tip into the ground. There is no other leverage than gravity to hold itself from bouncing back out of the hole.
It worked on Earth, in testing, in sand.
In unknown soil conditions with reduced Mars gravity it bounces out of the hole.
Who woulda thunk it.
Do you think they’ve thought about digging a significant hole with the Arm Shovel and resting the mole in there? Giving it a boost of at least a whole hammers length
Matthew Straney:
Good idea. You described their last chance to save the mole experiment. The whole thing is for the once proverbial German engineering art unfortunately not a glorious case and a shame for the DLR.
Mathew, The problem with your idea, as Bob the Zee has pointed out earlier in another thread, is that the probe has to be surrounded by soil to give an accurate reading of the soil conditions. Just lying on top of soil gives you a combined soil and atmosphere reading.
Armageddon–
“You guys are NASA” scene
https://youtu.be/wCKzJjaIp7k
2:30
I have only one word for the design team. Very simple, very reliable. “Auger.” It doesn’t need to jump around with a fancy magnet driven weight. It drills a nice uniform hole through any soil one could imagine, not counting solid rock. And if by chance you think you’ll need to g through rock, it comes with attachments if you go to the right store.
Yes I am oversimplifying it a little, but really, an inclined plane is one of the simplest tools in existence. All you need to do is rotate it. You doing have to hammer it into the ground with an electric pogo stick. Once the thing has drilled it’s hole, you drop your probe in and then use that handy little scoop, which is already on the lander, to fill the hole back in. Or if you really want to get fancy, build the temperature probe into the auger it’s self, that way you can just leave it in the hole. Either way, it would work a heck of a lot better both in low gravity and in unknown soil conditions than the electric pogo stick.
Waiting for NASA to announce the follow-on Whack-A-Mole mission.