InSight Surface Operations, 26 Nov 2018- 21 Dec 2022 Options

[MahFL]

Not sure if it's plausible to redeploy the instrument once it's release. There's no way to draw it back up, is there?

No, once its drilling, it's one way only.

[PaulH51]

Animated GIF cropped from processed ICC frames from sols 89 & 92. It shows the movement of HP3 after the mole was released, I selected these frames because of the similar solar time.

[SteveM]

"Tests with pebbles in sand suggest that the mole takes some hours but can work itself through a layer of pebbles or move a stone out of the way. Geological evidence suggest that the regolith should be mostly sandy. So hopefully we can get past the obstacle on Sunday and get to 70 cm more easily. But we should not forget, we are moving into the unknown." DLR Blog

Do any of the geologists here have an idea whether there could be a layer of relatively impenetrable consolidated material — e.g., a natural cement — that, unlike pebbles or stones, makes it difficult or impossible for the mole to move it or go around?

[PaulH51]

IDC GIF with processed frames from 87, 92 & 94 shows more movement of the HP3 support structure after the second hammering attempt. The PI blog dated March 3, 2019 only appears to have provided additional details on the 1st attempt

[nprev]

Not a geologist, but I have been wondering about duricrusts. IIRC, Elysium is primarily a volcanic province but sand covers all on Mars. There could well be ancient evaporite deposits almost anywhere beneath the surface, I'd imagine.

[HSchirmer]

Do any of the geologists here have an idea whether there could be a layer of relatively impenetrable consolidated material — e.g., a natural cement — that, unlike pebbles or stones, makes it difficult or impossible for the mole to move it or go around?

Also not a geologist, but there is a fair bit of evidence from shoreline studies suggesting that the Insight landing site
-edit-
sits roughly between the Deuteronilus and Arabia shorelines
The landing site in Elysium is at 135 degrees longitude, about 4.5 latitude, so around 2 o'clock in this polar view


so there is a chance this area
-edit-

was a shallow sea at one time.

https://eprints.ucm.es/33193/1/3-Marte%20SL.pdf
Parker et al. (1989, 1993) also proposed an older, higher-standing Contact 1, later on
renamed Arabia shoreline (Clifford and Parker, 2001). This shoreline, which would be of
Noachian age (see Clifford and Parker, 2001), is roughly coincident with the Martian
dichotomy separating the lowlands from the highlands,

So, there may well be buried duri-crusts or conglomerates or drainage delta materials.

[serpens]

The deviation of the probe was expected if it encountered a rock and this is taken into account in analysis of results. The rocks exposed on the surface and the size of those excavated by the thrusters does seem to indicate a reasonable probability of encountering an obstruction, so I doubt we need to hypothesize evaporates or buried duricrust. But on Mars we are in the position of dark ages navigators. Here there be dragons, which is quite exciting really.

[PaulH51]

Sol 92 & 94 ICC GIF Showing what looks like the upper part of the HP3 'Mole' after the 2nd hammering attempt on sol 94.
Credit to the observation to Lars on Twitter (https://twitter.com/LarsTheWanderer)
If this is the mole it must be close to full insertion, but likely at an angle to have pushed the housing away
I've processed / cropped the images to 600x600

[MahFL]

So the current depth is 30cm. 50 cm is needed for the first temp measurement. Tough going.

https://www.musc.dlr.de/hp3/

[PaulH51]

Sol 95 IDC GIF, of the grapple being stowed. Cropped to reduce GIF load time

[MahFL]

Setback on the drilling, a two week pause, seems their good luck may have ran out...

https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8419/mars-insigh...g/?site=insight

[PaulH51]

There is a large collection of IDC & ICC frames from sol 96. These may be one attempt over several sols to capture the shadow of Phobos as it crosses the terrain around the lander mentioned in the HP3 blog linked in the previous post.

I think the IDC images may be pointing at the ground covered by HP3's radiance sensor 'RAD'.

I've reviewed all the images from both cameras that were downlinked (so far) but can't see any obvious darkening.

I'm not sure if these cameras are auto exposure and may have compensated for any variation of lighting, or if the shadow passed over between frames.

Note: The HP3 blog updates are extremely welcome, but they do confuse me a little when they refer to future events on Mars. E.g: These Phobos shadows events don't mention mission sols, but use dates (5, 6 and 8 March 2019). I think they're using JPL dates, not DLR dates, but it's a tad confusing to my ageing brain

[MahFL]

Pretty sure the cameras are not auto exposure.

[James Sorenson]

Pretty sure the cameras are not auto exposure.

They are flight MER/MSL spares with just the addition of a Bayer filter mask. Identical software and electronics. No reason to suggest they don't have auto-exposure, which MER and MSL did.

In regards to the SP3 mole issues. Why not use the strong, capable arm with it''s unused scoop to dig a deep trench next to the instrument down to the depth that the mole was having issues penetrating to see what we are up against? Knowing that information visually would help in the testbed work out ways to get around it. At the very least determine what stopped the mole if it is unable to get through and help redesign it to handle simular situations on future missions that include something simular to it.

The only reason I could think of to not do that would be potential cave in''s effecting the SEIS data. In that case, just fill in the trench after.

[MarcF]

From the HP3 blog
https://www.dlr.de/blogs/en/desktopdefault....9577_read-1090/
"Excellent news! We just got the data from the first Phobos eclipse observation and the cooling by the shadow passing through the fields of view of the radiometer in about 30 seconds is clearly visible. The cooling is by about 1°C and is thus somewhat larger than expected and certainly better than with the most pessimistic estimates (that would have said, we will not be able to see it at all)! So the team is happy and is rejoicing about the first eclipse on Mars ever observed with a radiometer."

Regards,
Marc.