NASA's 'mole' tried to dig into Mars. It didn't go as planned.
From the robots that fail miserably at their jobs to the robots dealing with our literal crap, Mashable’s Crappy Robots dives into the complex world of automation — for better or worse or much, much worse.
After its first attempt to penetrate the rust-colored Martian surface in 2019, NASA's “mole” sent a signal back to Earth.
It was not good news.
The mole is part of the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP³) on NASA's InSight lander, which touched down on Mars in 2018.
Built by the German Aerospace Center, the mole works by hammering itself into the ground. Data sent from the mole showed hammer strokes. But measurements from an optical ruler showed that it hadn't moved much. Read more...
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