2023 Author: Bryan Walter | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-21 22:24
The drill of the HP3 instrument of the Martian station InSight has almost completely sunk into the ground. The mission team was thus able to neutralize the aftermath of a recent accident when an impact probe popped out of the ground, the mission said on Twitter.
According to the original plan, the HP3 (The Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package) installation, which arrived on Mars together with the automatic station InSight, was supposed to create a five-meter well in the ground. There, the installation was also supposed to lower a plume with sensors of thermal conductivity of the layers of the Martian soil. However, drilling work was suspended in March this year - almost immediately after the start.
It soon became clear that the drill has little adhesion to the surrounding soil, due to which the recoil on impacts does not balance and instead of deepening, it expands the walls of the well. After repeated attempts, the engineers still managed to provide the tool with the necessary grip for work: the drill began to gradually go deeper into the soil. However, at the end of October, he unexpectedly half jumped out of the ground.
Nevertheless, the specialists managed to fix the position of the installation again in order to continue work: after five series of blows, the drill almost completely went into the ground. Now engineers, however, will again have to decide on the transfer of the pressure point of the robotic arm to the drill: the current position for the plume is unsafe.
Despite the fact that the scientific program of the mission was interrupted, the data obtained already now allow us to assess the properties of the regolith at the site of work. It is assumed that the surface area consists of a solid layer (dyurikrast) with a thickness of about 20 centimeters and loose sandy soil, which penetrated into the well during the bounce of the impact probe. Work on the installation will resume on January 6, 2020.
You can read about the details of the InSight scientific program and the mysteries of Martian geology in our materials "Look inside the Red Planet" and "Seismograph for Mars".
