English: PIA23277: Getting Ready to Help InSight's Heat Probe

https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA23277

The robotic arm on NASA's Mars InSight lander moves in place over the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) and opens the fingers of its grapple in this series of images from June 1, 2019. Using the robotic arm, InSight engineers are preparing to lift the HP3 support structure -- the black device with four footpads pressed into the soil -- from where it was placed a few months ago on Mars. The instrument's self-hammering "mole" is partially buried beneath it. Engineers hope that by moving the support structure, they can use the robotic arm to help the mole dig deeper into the soil and take the temperature of Mars.

JPL manages InSight for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed by the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supports spacecraft operations for the mission.

A number of European partners, including France's Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain's Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors.

For more information about the mission, go to https://mars.nasa.gov/insight.