How do Mars rovers send their data to Earth?
Mostly not directly. A rover on Mars passes almost everything it collects to a spacecraft orbiting overhead, and that orbiter sends it on to the giant antennas of NASA’s Deep Space Network on Earth.
Is JPL part of NASA? How a 1936 student rocket test became NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Yes and no. JPL is a NASA laboratory – NASA’s only federally funded research and development centre – but it is operated for the agency by Caltech. And it is older than NASA: it began with a rocket test by Caltech students in 1936 and spent its first two decades working for the US Army.
What did Poland build for NASA’s InSight Mars lander – and why did the “mole” stop?
Polish engineers built the hammering mechanism that was meant to drive InSight’s heat probe, nicknamed the “mole”, up to 5 metres into Mars. The mechanism worked, but the Martian soil would not grip the probe, and in January 2021 the attempt was ended with the mole just below the surface.