However, the little drill/mole. . . still hasn't been able to reach its planned five meter depth. But it is now firmly buried by the regolith, and with a cold Martian winter likely firming / freezing the topsoil, with an at least temporary layer of a harder crust, it may, when re-activated near New Years, gain enough traction to start making depth with its percussive hammerhead. We shall see, but here is the latest from the team -- and a bit:
. . .Now that the heat probe is just below the Martian surface, InSight's arm will scoop some additional soil on top to help it keep digging so it can take Mars' temperature.
NASA's InSight lander continues working to get its "mole" – a 16-inch-long (40-centimeter-long) pile driver and heat probe – deep below the surface of Mars. A camera on InSight's arm recently took images of the now partially filled-in "mole hole," showing only the device's science tether protruding from the ground. . . .
As for the learnings on Marsquakes, we've read this -- about a year ago, though I did not mention it then:
. . .Mars trembles more often — but also more mildly — than expected. SEIS has found more than 450 seismic signals to date, the vast majority of which are probably quakes (as opposed to data noise created by environmental factors, like wind). The largest quake was about magnitude 4.0 in size — not quite large enough to travel down below the crust into the planet's lower mantle and core. Those are "the juiciest parts of the apple" when it comes to studying the planet's inner structure, said Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal investigator at JPL. . . .
It took months after InSight's landing in November 2018 before they recorded the first seismic event. By the end of 2019, SEIS was detecting about two seismic signals a day, suggesting that InSight just happened to touch down at a particularly quiet time. Scientists still have their fingers crossed for "the Big One."
Mars doesn't have tectonic plates like Earth, but it does have volcanically active regions that can cause rumbles. A pair of quakes was strongly linked to one such region, Cerberus Fossae, where scientists see boulders that may have been shaken down cliffsides. Ancient floods there carved channels nearly 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) long. Lava flows then seeped into those channels within the past 10 million years — the blink of an eye in geologic time.
Some of these young lava flows show signs of having been fractured by quakes less than 2 million years ago. "It's just about the youngest tectonic feature on the planet," said planetary geologist Matt Golombek of JPL. "The fact that we're seeing evidence of shaking in this region isn't a surprise, but it's very cool. . . ."
Between now and New Years, then. . . be excellent to each other. We await now a forty-first passing event, in the coming week -- with a wide smile, and recoveries from sugar comas of last evening. . . here and there. All the best to your momma, too. . . . with fond wishes, only. . . .
And as I go, I'll leave here below a time lapse of the now-buried head of the percussive miner's probe:
Grinning still, at ghouls and cartoon heros, ear to ear. . . .
नमस्ते
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