A 'Mole' Isn't Digging Mars: NASA Engineers Are Trying To Find Out Why
After the InSight lander had trouble drilling a sophisticated thermometer into the Martian surface, a Plan B also didn't work, and the instrument ended up backing itself out of the ground.
by Joe Palca
Nov 29, 2019
2 minutes
There's a mole on Mars that's making NASA engineers tear their hair out.
No, they haven't discovered a small, insectivorous mammal on the red planet.
The mole vexing engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena is a known as the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package, or HP3 — or just "the mole" — carried on NASA's probe that landed on
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