Last Updated: NASA Declares Insight ‘mole’ Probe Defunct After It Fails To Burrow Mars 'deep Enough' “We’ve given it everything we’ve got, but Mars and our heroic mole remain incompatible,” the German Space Agency scientist said in a statement. NASA on January 16 declared Insight ‘mole’ defunct after it failed to burrow deep enough into the Red Planet to take its temperature. The lander arrived on the Martian surface in November 2018 and was declared dead only two years into the 16-inch (40 centimetres) heat probe after it couldn’t dig 6 feet into the Martian crust to detect the temperature of the mars dust.