Future Mars missions will want to move underground for applications such as accessing water ice, or for hunting for microbial life under the surface, NASA noted. Why InSight failed to dig into the Martian surface came down to “unexpected properties” of the soil, the agency said, which proved harder to push through than the material that two previous Mars missions encountered. InSight’s extended mission will not only include quake monitoring, the craft will also collect data via a radio experiment to learn whether the planet’s core is solid or liquid.