Mars lander installs quake monitorBy ASSOCIATED PRESShome/News/World/Mars lander installs quake monitorCAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.: NASA’s new Mars lander has placed a quake monitor on the planet’s dusty red surface, just a few weeks after its arrival. Mars InSight‘s robotic arm removed the seismometer from the spacecraft deck and set it on the ground Wednesday to monitor Mars quakes. Project Manager Tom Hoffman called the milestone “an awesome Christmas present.”It is the first time a robotic arm had lowered an experiment onto the Martian surface. The heat probe, dubbed the mole, will burrow up to 16 feet (5 meters) into Mars to measure internal temperatures. “Seismometer deployment is as important as landing InSight on Mars,” Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Bruce Banerdt, lead scientist, said in a statement.

Source: Manila Times December 22, 2018 02:28 UTC