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Probe From NASA's InSight Lander Burrows Into the Soil of Mars (space.com)
"The 'mole' aboard NASA's InSight Mars lander has encountered stiff resistance on its first subsurface sojourn beneath the surface of the Red Planet," reports Space.com:
In a major mission milestone, InSight's Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument burrowed underground for the first time on Feb. 28. After 400 hammer blows over the course of four hours, the instrument apparently got between 7 inches and 19.7 inches (18 to 50 centimeters) beneath the red dirt -- but obstacles slowed its progress, mission team members said...
The $850 million InSight lander -- whose name is short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport -- touched down on Nov. 26. The spacecraft aims to map the Red Planet's interior in unprecedented detail. It will do this primarily by characterizing "marsquakes" and other vibrations with a suite of supersensitive seismometers, which was built by a consortium led by the French space agency CNES; and measuring subsurface heat flow with HP3, which DLR provided.
"I'm digging Mars!" announced NASA's official Twitter feed for the InSight robotic lander, adding "My self-hammering mole has started burrowing in, and my team is poring over the data..."
The $850 million InSight lander -- whose name is short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport -- touched down on Nov. 26. The spacecraft aims to map the Red Planet's interior in unprecedented detail. It will do this primarily by characterizing "marsquakes" and other vibrations with a suite of supersensitive seismometers, which was built by a consortium led by the French space agency CNES; and measuring subsurface heat flow with HP3, which DLR provided.
"I'm digging Mars!" announced NASA's official Twitter feed for the InSight robotic lander, adding "My self-hammering mole has started burrowing in, and my team is poring over the data..."
Which is why people would be useful on the surface. They can look for more opportune ways to break through the surface, and even wield tools that no little rover can.
If you can send people, you can also send a massively bigger rover with heavy tools.
"I'm digging Mars." God, I hate it when NASA and other science organizations anthropomorphize everything. It is very unscientific and can give less educated people (most of them voters) the wrong idea about how nature really works. As in, "the virus mutated in order to spread more easily". (I can't find the exact quote now, but you know what I mean.)
So I guess the Insight lander has a personality and a whole PR team to relay its hopes and feelings to its fans and the interested public. If I ask, maybe it will send me an autographed picture. I wonder if Insight writes in block letters or cursive.