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InSight – beneath the surface of Mars



 

 InSight
zum Bild InSight

For NASA’s InSight mission to Mars, DLR provides the HP3 instrument. Its main “thermal sensor”, a self-impelling nail nicknamed the “Mole” will hammer itself 5 meters beneath the Martian surface to measure the heat flux. At the SR institute, multi-body dynamics models have been coupled with complex particle models of the Martian soil in order to make high-fidelity predictions on the Mole’s penetration performance.
Optimizations based on these models led to adaptions of the inner spring-mass system of the hammering mechanism, which decreased the number of strokes needed to reach the desired depth to 25% compared to the original prototype, while maintaining the same amount of input power.
 


Contact
Dr. Roy Lichtenheldt
German Aerospace Center

Institute of System Dynamics and Control
, Space Systems Dynamics
Oberpfaffenhofen-Wessling

Tel.: +49 8153 28-3095

Fax: +49 8153 28-44-3883

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