Mars has been getting a lot of attention recently when the Perseverance rover came to February 18 and its stunning panoramic images of the Red Planet that we saw in the first month of operation.
But another interesting NASA spacecraft called Insight has been on the surface of Mars since November of 2018 separating the interior of our neighboring planet, and now it has recovered detailed information about size heart of Mars for the first time – and it ‘s much bigger than expected.
InSight scientists described their measurements in a series of presentations last week at the Virtual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference with headquarters in Houston, Texas.
Based on Insight Seismographic Instruments, which interpret seismic waves sandwiched between the planet’s core and the planet’s radius, the heart radius of the Red Planet was found to be between 1,810 and 1,860 kilometers, about half the size of Earth.
Per Nature, Simon Stähler, a seismologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, said these interesting basic figures in a pre-scheduled presentation for an online scientific conference March 18. Stähler and his team now submit their data for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
NASA’s billion-dollar probe is a stationery landlord parked near the Martian equator at the western edge of Elysium Planitia where it listens for and monitors ‘marsquakes,’ aptly nicknamed for the same seismic thing of geological chambers here on Earth.
Since they first fell to the dusty red surface, Insight has recorded nearly 500 temblors, most of them micro-earthquakes. However, nearly 50 ‘marsquakes’ have been recorded somewhere between size 2 and 4, a shake intense enough to provide vital feedback on the making inside of Mars.
According to a NASA team study, the heart is much denser than expected, and is theorized to be made up of lighter elements such as oxygen, mixtures with iron and sulfur.
New InSight measurements will help scientists understand the shape and evolution of Mars, and help explain how its dense, metal-filled heart was divided from the surrounding rocky mantle to the planet. cooling. It seems that this fiery heart is still melting from the genesis of Mars 4.5 billion years ago.
The Earth and the Moon are the only other rocky planet bodies that scientists have measured. Now being able to add Mars to that shortlist will allow researchers to compare and differentiate how the planets of the Solar System evolved and how Mars lost its range and magnetic atmosphere. .
The mission ‘s seismic data also suggests that Mars’ high costume has a high zone of dense material, extending from 700 to 800 kilometers below the surface, which contains seismic energy that is travel deep traveling with less distance.