We establish a sharp estimate on the negative moments of the smallest eigenvalue of the Malliavin matrix gamma z of Z := (u(s, y), u(t , x) - u(s, y)), where u is the solution to a system of d non-linear stochastic heat equations in spatial dimension k >= 1. We also obtain the optimal exponents for the L-p-modulus of continuity of the increments of the solution and of its Malliavin derivatives. These lead to optimal lower bounds on hitting probabilities of the process {u(t,x) : (t, x) is an element of [0, infinity[xR(k)} in the non-Gaussian case in terms of Newtonian capacity, and improve a result in Dalang, Khoshnevisan and Nualart [Stoch PDE: Anal Comp 1 (2013) 94-151].