EVAN GOUGH, UNIVERSE TODAY 14 JANUARY 2021 It's always a sad day when a mission comes to an end. And it's even sadder when the mission never really got going in the first place. That's where we're at with NASA's InSight lander. The entire mission isn't over, but the so-called Mole, the instrument designed and built by Germany's DLR, has been pronounced dead.
The Mole is, of course, the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3). It's an instrument designed to measure the heat flowing from the Martian interior to the surface. The entire InSight mission (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport) was focused on discovering more about the interior of Mars.