NASA gives up trying to burrow under Mars surface with 'mole' probe

NASA's "mole" on Mars has failed. After nearly two years of attempting to dig the InSight lander's heat probe – nicknamed the mole – into the Red Planet's surface, engineers have finally given up. The InSight lander arrived on Mars in November 2018. Its main purpose is to study the planet's deep interior in order to help us understand the history of the solar system's rocky worlds. The lander has three main instruments to help it do that: a seismometer to catch vibrations travelling through the ground, a radio to precisely measure Mars's rotation and learn more about its metal core and a setup called the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) to measure the heat flowing out of the planet's centre.