NASA's InSight's Mole is finally making steady progress

A probe aboard NASA's InSight space lander finally appears to be making slow and steady progress in its mission to burrow into the surface of Mars. NASA said that its new approach of using a scoop on the end of the space lander's robotic arm to push the 16-inch-long probe – known as the Mole – into the Red Planet's resilient surface is helping it to gain headway. Efforts to penetrate the long thin'self-hammering nail', manufactured by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), into into the Martian surface kicked off in February 2019, but had since stalled. The Mole needs soil to fall into the hole it's digging to give it the necessary friction to able to penetrate and go deeper, in its mission to measure the heat from the planet's interior. But the probe had encountered an unexpected layer of cemented soil – called'duricrust' – that wasn't falling into the hole the device had dug.