Sweet surprise: NASA Insight’s first sighting inside Mars reveals the red planet’s crust resembling a three-tier cake
- The lander’s seismometer has recorded more than 480 marsquakes since April 2019
- Differences in the movement of seismic waves allow scientists to estimate the size and shape of the crust.
- Mars’ crust is believed to be about 23 miles thick, much thicker than Earth
- Seismic activity has almost stopped, with only four earthquakes since June
Data returned to Earth from a NASA InSight spokesman show that Mars’ crust is made up of three cake-like layers.
Surrounded near the equator of Mars, the robotic lord’s highly sensitive seismometer, known as SEIS, has recorded hundreds of ‘marsquakes’ in the last two years.
Each earthquake emits two sets of seismic waves and analyzes the differences in how these waves move allowing researchers to begin to measure magnitude and make up the crust, clothing and heart of the planet.
‘We have enough data to start answering some of these big questions,’ Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist Bruce Banerdt told Nature.
Launched in 2018, the InSight mission marks the first time scientists have looked inside a planet other than Earth.
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A study of primary and secondary waves caused by hundreds of merchants shows that the crust of the red planet is made up of three layers ‘cake-like’
The Earth’s crust is divided into three rock subsets: metamorphic, igneous and sedimentary.
Scientists had structured the Mars crust theory in the same way but, until now, they had no data to work with.
According to the report in Nature, it is possible that Mars has only two layers but a three-phase crust aligns with the analysis of Martian meteorites.
By comparing the primary and secondary waves of the merchants, they have found that the crust is about 23 miles thick on average, and nearly 42 at its thickest.
NASA’s InSight surface arrived on Mars in 2018, but its ‘Mole’ probe has had trouble drilling beneath the surface
InSight’s highly sensitive seismometer, called SEIS, has recorded more than 480 marsquakes. Analyzing primary and secondary waves from these earthquakes, researchers estimate that Mars’ crust is about 23 miles thick.
That is much thicker than Earth, which has a crust that varies from about 3 miles below the oceans, up to 18 miles below the continents.
InSight (short for internal exploration using seismic explorations, geodesy and heat transport) arrived on Mars in November 2018.
His probe, known as the ‘Mole,’ was designed to dig beneath the surface and take the planet’s temperature – but unexpected buildings in martian soil made difficult progress.
Other equipment on the surface is fully functional, thankfully – including the seismometer, donated by the French space agency, the National Center d’Études Spatiales.
Since April 2019, SEIS has recorded more than 480 vibrations. The tremors are very moderate, and none larger than size 3.7.
‘No wonder we haven’t seen a bigger event,’ said scientist Mark Panning of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Panning says it’s not yet clear whether Mars is just more stable than Earth or whether InSight landed at rest.
The earthquakes had been daily for some time, but stopped abruptly at the end of June – around the time the planet entered the windiest season of the year.
The seismometer has a wing, but it is possible that the wind is so strong that it shakes the ground and hides legitimate tremors.
Researchers hope that more earthquakes will follow, giving them more insight into the inner layers of the planet.
‘Sometimes you get great flavors of amazing information, but most of the time you pick up on what nature has to tell you,’ said Banerdt.
‘It’s more like trying to find difficult ads than giving us the answers in a full-fledged folder.’
WHAT ARE THREE KEY ACCOUNTS?
The lawyer who could tell how the Earth was created: InSight lander set for Mars landing on November 26
Three key instruments allow the InSight controller to take the ‘pulse’ of the red planet:
Seismometer: The InSight domain carries a seismometer, SEIS, that listens to the beat of Mars.
The seismometer records the waves that travel through the inner structure of a planet.
Seismic wave analysis tells us what might be creating the waves.
On Mars, scientists suspect that the culprits may be marsquakes, or meteorites hitting the surface.
Heat check: InSight heat flow probe, HP3, digs deeper than previous scoops, drills or any other probes on Mars.
It will study how much heat is still flowing out of Mars.
Radio antennas: Like Earth, Mars moves slightly as it rotates around its axis.
To investigate this, two radio antennas, part of the RISE instrument, closely monitor the lawyer’s position.
This helps scientists test the planet’s reflexes and tells them how the deep inner structure affects the planet’s movement around the sun.