On May 4, 2022, NASA’s InSight lander detected a magnitude 5 quake on Mars — the strongest ever detected on another planet. The largest previously recorded marsquake was an estimated magnitude 4.2 detected on August 25, 2021.
An artist’s impression of the InSight lander on Mars. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
InSight, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is a lander designed to give Mars its first thorough checkup since it formed 4.5 billion years ago.
It is the first outer space robotic explorer to study in-depth the inner space of Mars: its crust, mantle, and core.
InSight was launched on May 5, 2018, with a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 401 rocket from Space Launch Complex 3 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
After an almost seven-month, 458-million-km journey from Earth, it touched down on November 26, 2018, near Mars’ equator on the western side of a flat, smooth expanse of lava called Elysium Planitia.
The lander sits in what appears to be a nearly rock-free ‘hollow’ — a depression created by a meteor impact that later filled with sand.
“InSight was sent to Mars with a highly sensitive seismometer to study the deep interior of the planet,” said members of the InSight team.
“As seismic waves pass through or reflect off material in Mars’ crust, mantle, and core, they change in ways that we can study to determine the depth and composition of these layers.”
“What we learn about the structure of Mars can help us better understand the formation of all rocky worlds, including Earth and its Moon.”
This spectrogram shows the magnitude 5 marsquake discovered by NASA’s InSight lander on May 4, 2022. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ETH Zurich.
The May 4 marsquake is a medium-size seismic event compared to those felt on Earth, but it’s close to the upper limit of what the scientists hoped to see on Mars during InSight’s mission.
They will need to study this new quake further before being able to provide details such as its location, the nature of its source, and what it might tell us about the interior of Mars.
“Since we set our seismometer down in December 2018, we’ve been waiting for ‘the big one’,” said InSight principal investigator Dr. Bruce Banerdt, a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“This quake is sure to provide a view into the planet like no other. Scientists will be analyzing this data to learn new things about Mars for years to come.”
_____
This article is based on text provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
