InSight Surface Operations, 26 Nov 2018- Options

[atomoid]

Some years ago I wrote a historical survey of penetrator missions and proposals. I think they really only make sense at Mars, but even then, you need a programmatic commitment to launch 'many': as there is an irreduceable terrain risk, so a 'mission success = 8 out of 10 vehicles return data' paradigm needs to be adopted.
https://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~rlorenz/penetrators_asr.pdf

thanks for that, lots of good info in there! oddly all the images are partially obscured by a dark elliptical segment at upper left.
haven't made it through all of it yet but recollecting how sadly after two decades there still haven't been any follow-up efforts after DS2 failed to phone home, which combined with the whole MPL debacle seemed to push the whole faster/cheaper/riskier approach off the table, unfortunate since it seems such probes can be done cheaply enough even as low-key evolutionary engineering studies we could have had quite a scientific bonus in the fraction where they may have survived.

[marsophile]

Perhaps a mole-like device would work fine if the "hammer" and the "spike" were separated, at least until the "spike" part has been securely buried. After that, the "spike" could morph into a separate drill itself. (It has been speculated that the current problem is due to an infill of soil when the drill is raised in between strokes.)

[Phil Stooke]

The ICC takes images up to several times a day which can be searched for evidence of clouds and dust devils. This composite shows changes in the sky in recent sols, using images with similar lighting.

For each pair of sols I merged the later image with the negative of the earlier sol and greatly increased the contrast of the result. The surface looks really bad because the shadows are not exactly the same, so I replaced the surface with an unprocessed image. The sky sections show some markings through the noise, which I have blurred to show the markings better. I did it for two image pairs to make sure the changes were not the same each time, so, at least part of what we see should be real.

Phil

[PaulH51]

....composite shows changes in the sky in recent sols, using images with similar lighting.

Nice work Phil

Meanwhile on sol 339, the scoop moves closer to the mole. Likely setting up for another pinning session.
GIF using 2 processed frames acquired shortly before local noon. GIF reduced to 800x800 to speed loading time.

[Phil Stooke]

While we wait for action on the pin, here's a picture taken on sol 343 (yesterday as I write this). Note the disturbed surface indicated by arrows. It was made on sol 318 when a section of the tether was briefly in contact with the surface.

Phil

[paraisosdelsiste...]

New images from Sol 346 just arrived. It seems the movement caused the mole to come out a bit more.

 1.mp4 ( 1.52MB ) Number of downloads: 754

[Explorer1]

I don't see it getting higher out of the ground; seems more like a sideways/translation movement, with a bit of twisting.

[ronatu]

Were seismogramms recorded during penetration attempts?

[PaulH51]

sol 349 : Another pinned hammer session. Looking good, mole heading into the regolith
Processed GIF (800x800). More frames likely to be in the pipeline...

[ddeerrff]

This tweet seems to show quite a bit more progress. https://twitter.com/NASAInSight/status/1197594417667772416

[PaulH51]

Were seismogramms recorded during penetration attempts?

Yes (for some of the hammering sessions): Read the DLR Mole log book / blog on this link then search for 'SEIS' You will find the teams interpretation of the data from SEIS and how they used to understand what was happening under the ground. AFAIK this will have continued through all hammering sessions, but you'ed have to check the data. The early data from SEIS is already in the mission PDS, but looks like the data for the HP3 observations by SEIS will only be added at a later date, See the PDS mission link. This states the next PDS (release 3) is currently scheduled for January next year.