NASA has its hands full trying to persuade its Mars InSight heat probe to, well, probe. But there’s more to this mission than taking the Red Planet’s temperature.
A suite of papers published this week in the journals Nature Geoscience and Nature Communications reveal a planet “alive with quakes, dust devils, and strange magnetic pulses.”
While the team continues problem-solving its robotic mole issue, the lander’s ultra-sensitive seismometer has kept an ear to the ground, listening for so-called “Marsquakes.”
Each event acts as a sort of flashbulb, illuminating the orb’s interior and revealing the depth and composition of its layers.
The Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) has detected more than 450 seismic signals to date—most of which are likely actual quakes (as opposed to background noise).
The first interior rumbling, heard in April, turned out to be an “odd duck,” according to NASA: Sol 128 featured a surprisingly high-frequency seismic signal, compared to what the science team has heard since then.
The two largest quakes detected by NASA’s InSight appear to have originated in a region of Mars called Cerberus Fossae (via NASA/JPL/Caltech/University of Arizona)
By the end of 2019, SEIS was spotting about two seismic signals a day.
Mars may not have Earth’s tectonic plates, but it does boast volcanically active regions that can cause rumbles.
A pair of quakes were strongly linked to one such region, Cerberus Fossae (above), where ancient floods carved channels nearly 800 miles long. Those empty canals were eventually filled with lava flows, some of which show signs of being fractured by quakes less than 2 million years ago.
“It’s just about the youngest tectonic feature on the planet,” JPL planetary geologist Matt Golombek explained. “The fact that we’re seeing evidence of shaking in this region isn’t a surprise, but it’s very cool.”
The largest Marsquake (so far) measured about 4.0 magnitude—not quite enough to travel below the crust and into Mars’ lower mantle and core, which are “the juiciest parts of the apple” when it comes to studying a planet’s inner structure, principal investigator Bruce Banerdt said.
Scientists are keeping their fingers crossed for “the Big One.”
More on Geek.com:
- MRO’s HiRISE Camera Spots NASA’s InSight, Curiosity on Mars
- NASA’s InSight Lander Snaps Dreamy Sunrise, Sunset on Mars
- NASA’s InSight Lander Is Mars’ New Weather Forecast Provider
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