Interior of Mars Revealed by NASA InSight Lander’s Seismic Observations

[Grim Reaper 6]

The first direct seismic observations from NASA’s InSight lander, presented in three studies in this issue, provide clues to the composition of Mars. Researchers across these studies report preliminary findings from the Insight mission and begin to map — for the first time — the interior of a planet apart from Earth. In early 2019, NASA’s Martian lander InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) began to detect and record marsquakes from its position on the surface of Mars, including several subcrustal quakes that resemble tectonic events on Earth.

Brigitte Knapmeyer-Endrun and colleagues used marsquakes and ambient seismic noise to image the structure of the Martian crust below the InSight landing site, finding evidence for a multi-layered crust with either two or three interfaces. Extrapolating this data to the entire planet, Knapmeyer-Endrun et al. show how the average thickness of Mars’ crust lies between 24 and 72 kilometers (km).

Interior of Mars Revealed by NASA InSight Lander’s Seismic Observations (scitechdaily.com)

 

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