Hello,

The first dump will be on the thermal shield, the regolithe will slide on the cable. This avoids touching the shield with the shovel, while ensuring it is close enough to the junction with the shield base.

we repeated this on Earth, to better visualize the operation

https://twitter.com/i/status/1370408682752770052

https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/multimedia/ra...mission=insight

The result of this first emptying of the bucket is not perfect but the continuation is expected

Nice! Did the soil dump actually leave a clean mark on the thermal shield?

Hello,

Yes a priori this dust-free surface is well due to the spill of regolith on the shield.
The geometric regularity of the clean surface surprised me anyway.

A pity the same trick won't work on the solar panels...

-Rover Designer - "Note to self, next time include a vacuum-sample arm to collect dust from solar panels..."

Some results from InSight

nature InSight results

That's cool to have the interior of Mars constrained, and at almost the same time that the same could be said of Jupiter and Saturn. This decade has been a Golden Age of interior planetary science!

It's interesting that there are two kinds of noise that have become prominent: Wind and severe day-night temperature changes. I'd say that it's a matter of perspective how much those factors are interfering with our study of martian seismology vs. how much those factors are part of martian seismology. We come in with terrestrial bias presuming that certain kinds of systems are largely independent from one another and those systems might be more interrelated somewhere else.

I suppose by analogy, when you make a map of Antarctica, you have a decision of whether you want to map the land and ignore the ice or if you want to map the ice because that's "land" there. On Mars, wind and weather get involved in the seismology. I don't think it's too presumptuous to suppose that at the right time and place, a tremble begun with those factors might cause some downslope mass movement that counts as a real mars-quake.

Nice to see a mission objective completed.

There's something perverse about this remark

"Stähler declined an interview request from Nature, saying the team intends
to submit the work for publication in a peer-reviewed journal."

This is basically reflecting that Science and Nature have an editorial policy that they will not
publish (peer-reviewed) papers if the authors have engaged with the media about the results.
Presenting at a conference is ok, but not talking to reporters afterwards. Even if the reporters
are writing for the news pages of Science/Nature.....

Seems like Science/Nature want to have it both ways, get the clicks/ad revenue for news stories,
and get the traffic for the papers themselves (and, depending on journal setting, get open access
fees for publishing the paper...)

Sol 822. the trench is extended sideways.

Phil

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More digging on sol 829. Details will follow.
Phil

Two passes of the scoop join and extend the previous trenches, providing a big soil pile to dump on the tether.
Phil
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IDC frame from sol 830, in a change from recent scrapping / scooping activities adjacent to SEIS, the robotic arm camera was pointed towards the horizon.
Pure guess: possible Tau measurement?
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2 more strong "earth-like" quakes were detected: mag 3.3 and 3.1, which are strong enough to refract around the interior of Mars

https://scitechdaily.com/mars-quake-nasas-i...quakes-on-mars/

And in other news from InSight, here is a comparison of images of its parachute taken at roughly 12 month intervals. The first is not long after landing. The second shows the parachute folded over itself, and the third shows the parachute moved northeast with a hint that it scraped over the ground a bit to leave a mark.

Most Mars parachutes for which we have multiple images show this sort of movement, so it's nothing remarkable... except that it does show the potential for relatively strong wind gusts in the area. If we could just get one to clean those solar panels!

The distance from backshell to parachute is about 20 m.

Phil

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https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insigh...dont-die-2021-4

As far as I can tell this is just a rewrite of this Feb. 12 mission news item:

https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8858/insight-is-...s/?site=insight

Phil

Scooping from 800 to 844 sols.

That is really nice. Thanks.
Phil

I'm curious to know if the balance weight impacts were detected. I had read the past posts and can't find any info. Have I missed it or don't we have any answers?

Nothing I had heard yet.

Phil

Some more arm / scoop action on sol 846. Looks like they dumped the contents of the scoop on the WTS for the second time 😊
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I thought they were in a dire energy situation ?

Some sources were exaggerating the direness.

Phil

Here's an animation of the scoop movements (ICC camera Sols 800-850) posted on twitter by @landru79

Another scoop of sand & pebbles dumped on the tether on Sol 856 (April 24, 2021).
2 scoops in one week!
The dump pile is growing with each additional scoop, now spreading over the pinning mass.
Click to view attachment

This paper (free access to pdf for a few weeks) documents the declining array output. Also notes a couple of faint dust devil shadows
https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1cy9F4L-YbL0M

"Another scoop of sand & pebbles"
I'm struck by the small size of the soil dumps, limited of course by the size of the scoop - looking at the ICC images, it's going to take a long time to bury the full length of the tether.

Phil

The scoop was not as full as earlier scoops, I guess that process (without ground in the loop) will always be a little unpredictable. I'm not sure, but they may be happy if they can cover the pinning mass and the raised loop just after the pinning mass. Even that will take an age...

'May 1st' on Mars, but no holiday for InSight.
Another nicely placed scoop of regolith placed over the 'pinning mass' on SEIS's tether on Sol 863.
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This is a visual summary of activities over the last c. 130 sols.

Phil
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Another Scoop and Dump on Sol 870...
One bite at a time
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Another weekend... Another scoop and dump
Sol 877 IDC camera (9 frame GIF)
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Yet another weekend, yet another scoop and dump... but this time on top of the lander.

Phil

I have to admit this one took me by surprise (IDC images from sol 884)
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Heh, I was kidding a few pages back!
This is still about reducing noise in the tether? Or something else?

Could be improving thermal properties... I wouldn't bet on it though. Curious.

Well when the Mole doesn't work, BE the Mole!

More weekend trenching at Homestead Hollow (May 30, 2021, Sol 891)
IDC frames
Click to view attachment

No drop this time, just pulling soil into a pile for future use.

Phil

Phil/PaulH51 - thank you for all the detailed images and information on the tether burial ...... but am having a hard time following it all

Is there a list of the activities with dates/sols where all of this is summarized?

2/27 sol 801 first trench - 1 pass of scoop
2/28 sol 803 second trench - 3 passes of scoop
3/5 test on Earth - location ???
etc.

Thanks.

Post 1131 on this thread is about as close as you are likely to get to a list of operations. It will be updated occasionally.

Phil

We had a lot of discussions over the last 6 months about doing something that seems superficially suicidal. But some careful consideration of dust adhesion and removal processes showed it was the most likely thing to help the energy situation as we move through aphelion in the next few months. I was very excited when this experiment yielded an instant jump in power of a few per cent.


https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8959/nasas-insig...t/?site=insight

Yes, I'd say number two is a bit more of an obstacle than number one...

Glad to see this soil at least has some use, after what it did to HP3....

Sol 897 IDC: Saltation Saturday More commonly known as dumping a scoop of regolith on the lander's deck.
Click to view attachmentSaltation

A little weekend trenching on Sol 904. Before & After IDC frames shows a new trench close the HP3.
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The trench 'underneath' that little trench is also new on the same sol.

Phil

Another Saltation Saturday (Sol 911 IDC animated GIF)
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Reduced to 800x800px to stay within upload limits

Here is an article from Space News concerning the dropping power levels due to dust accumulation. Unlike Spirit and Opportunity, there have been no cleaning events. Perhaps a future solar powered lander may address the dust issue with a cleaning demonstration package, as the status quo is limiting spacecraft survivability.

https://spacenews.com/dropping-power-levels...nsight-mission/

The robotic arm is seen over the lander's deck on Sol 918 in this Instrument Deployment Camera frame.

There are several more frames on the public server, but I can not work out if it's and imaging session, or another saltation exercise, as I see no scoop activity.

I guess we'll have to wait for more images...
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