Current Position of InSight's Mole (Illustration)

The self-hammering "mole," part of the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) on NASA's InSight lander, was only partially buried in the soil of Mars as of early June 2019, as shown in this illustration. Engineering analysis has determined that the bottom of the mole is currently about 12-14 inches (30-35 centimeters) deep into Martian ground, with a bit of its top still inside the HP3 support structure. The mole is tilted about 19 degrees.

JPL manages InSight for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed by the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supports spacecraft operations for the mission.

A number of European partners, including France's Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain's Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors.

For more information about the mission, go to https://mars.nasa.gov/insight.