A blue box, a cubic metre of Mars-like sand, a rock, a fully-functional model of the Mars ‘Mole’ and a seismometer – these are the main components with which the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) is simulating the current situation on Mars. After its first hammering operation on 28 February…
Good Luck ‘Mole’—Experiment Starts Hammering into the Martian Soil
On 28 February 2019, ‘Mole’ fully automatically hammered its way into the Martian subsurface for the first time. In a first step, it penetrated to a depth between 18 and 50 centimetres into the Martian soil with 4000 hammer blows over a period of four hours. “On its way into the depths, the mole seems…