Watch InSight's successful landing on Mars: Difference between revisions
Watch InSight's successful landing on Mars (edit)
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==First robotic mole==
* For astrobiologists, one particularly interesting thing about this lander is that it is the first one to use a robotic mole. It will drill to a depth of 16 feet (about 5 meters). This is of interest for astrobiology, especially for the search for past life. ExoMars will be able to drill to 2 meters using a different technique and nothing else has been able to drill to anything like this depth. Viking scraped a shallow trench and most just drill mms into rocks. InSight is not an astrobiology mission; it's drilling in order to get a heat profile and learn about heat flows to help study the Mars interior. But it is the first test of robotic mole technology on Mars.
The name is very apt. It's a little self contianed unit with a hammer that kind of hammers away and sinks into the ground as it hammers and the soil then closes up above it as it drills. it is just like a mole. If you could watch it you'd see it burrowing away into the soil and vanishing from sight just leaving a wire poking out of the ground.
This shows how it works:
<youtube>7ZzXg0pU17w</youtube>
The thing is, in the vacuum conditions conventional drilling doesn't work. You can't use lubricants because it is a near vacuum (and anyway you'd have all the weight of lubricants to source somehow). Meanwhile the regolith is quite soft. And you want to carry as little mass with you as possible, don't want long continuous drililng shafts. Moles seem to be the best way to drill there.
ExoMars uses a somewhat more conventional drill but if you want to go to any depth then usually the idea is to use a mole.
The UK [[Beagle 2]] lander was the first and only previous mission to send a small robotic mole to Mars, it landed successfully but sadly wasn't able to open the last of its solar panels and signal back to Earth. It is pioneering technology that could be useful for future astrobiological missions to Mars, though sadly Mars 2020 won't have a drill able to drill to any significant depth. ExoMars will, to a depth of 2 meters, but using a different method.
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