Tilman Spohn News Today

The newest mission to Mars is to launch on Saturday morning. It will search for marsquakes and try to produce a map of the planet’s insides.

Earth is about 29 percent land and 71 percent oceans.

Earth-like worlds with similar land-to-ocean ratios to our planets may be exceedingly rare. Instead, our search for habitable worlds should focus on land-dominated pale yellow dots.

Government Executive Get the latest on need-to-know topics for federal employees delivered to your inbox. email The Simple Task That Mars Made Impossible NASA spent nearly two years trying to wrangle a probe designed to burrow into the planet’s soil. Troy Hudson didn’t want to think about Mars. It was Christmas, he had taken some time off, and this planet had enough going on at the end of 2020. But Mars was difficult to escape, he told me. It twirled in a mobile of the...

The Simple Task That Mars Made Impossible Marina Koren © NASA Troy Hudson didn’t want to think about Mars. It was Christmas, he had taken some time off, and this planet had enough going on at the end of 2020. But Mars was difficult to escape, he told me. It twirled in a mobile of the solar system in his home. It sat right there on his skin, tattooed on his arm, below the elbow. Hudson had spent more than a decade working on a robot that was currently parked on the surface of...

The Atlantic The Simple Task That Mars Made Impossible NASA spent nearly two years trying to wrangle a probe designed to burrow into the planet’s soil. NASA Troy Hudson didn’t want to think about Mars. It was Christmas, he had taken some time off, and this planet had enough going on at the end of 2020. But Mars was difficult to escape, he told me. It twirled in a mobile of the solar system in his home. It sat right there on his skin, tattooed on his arm, below the elbow. Hudson had spent mo...

January 21, 2021 The mission team for NASA’s InSight lander called off its attempts to try to dig deeper into Mars with the heat probe known as “the mole.” Meanwhile, the rest of the mission gained an extension to December 2022. Here’s the NASA’s InSight lander’s heat probe – nicknamed “the mole” – on October 3, 2020, when the spike-like mole was still trying to burrow into the red Martian soil. The copper-colored ribbon attached to the mole has sensors to measure the planet...

After two years of futile struggles to penetrate surprisingly sticky soil, the heat probe’s demise leaves large gaps in our understanding of the Red Planet’s interior

Jan 19, 2021 NASA via AP This Dec. 6, 2018 image made available by NASA shows the InSight lander. The scene was assembled from 11 photos taken using its robotic arm. CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA declared the Mars digger dead Thursday after failing to burrow deep into the red planet to take its temperature. Scientists in Germany spent two years trying to get their heat probe, dubbed the mole, to drill into the Martian crust. But the 16-inch-long (40-centimeter) device that is part of NASA�...

In this artists concept of NASAs InSight lander on Mars, layers of the planets subsurface can be seen below, and dust devils can be seen in the background. Credits: IPGP/Nicolas Sarter. The heat probe hasn’t been able to gain the friction it needs to dig, but the mission has been granted an extension to carry on with its other science. The heat probe developed and built by the German Aerospace Center and deployed on Mars by NASA’s InSight lander has ended its portion of the mission. Since ...