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Cartoon cross-section of the InSight landing site

Cartoon cross-section of the InSight landing site
Cartoon cross-section of the InSight landing site InSight landed in an ancient sand-filled crater. The crater floor probably lies buried underneath about a meter of sand fill. Below that are 8 to 12 meters of regolith -- an unconsolidated deposit of dust, sand, and rock. Beneath that, the bedrock is heavily fractured but probably otherwise intact. The InSight heat probe is designed to penetrate as many as 5 meters into the regolith. Emily Lakdawalla for The Planetary Society