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<keyword id="6360409" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="nasa" source="Orion">NASA</keyword>'s <keyword id="6474108" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="insight" source="Orion">InSight</keyword> lander has enabled scientists to measure the biggest quakes everwitnessed on Mars. On September 18, NASA's InSight lander celebrated its 1,000th Martian day, or sol, by measuring one of the biggest, longest-lasting marsquakes the mission has ever detected. The temblor is estimated to be of 4.2-magnitude and shook for nearly an hour-and-a-half, NASA said in a statement. This is the third major quake InSight has detected in a month: On August 25, the mission's seismometer detected two quakes of magnitudes 4.2 and 4.1. The previous record holder, which InSight measured in 2019, clocked in at magnitude 3.7 -- about five times less powerful than a 4.2-magnitude quake. Before NASA's InSight spacecraft touched down on Mars in 2018, the rovers and orbiters studying the <keyword id="6385434" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="red-planet" source="Orion">Red Planet</keyword> concentrated on its surface. The stationary lander's seismometer has changed that, revealing details about the planet's deep interior for the first time. The mission aims to study seismic waves to learn more about Mars' interior. While the teams are studying the September 18 quake, scientists have made some analysis of the August 25 quakes. According to them, the 4.2 magnitude event occurred about 8,500 kilometres from InSight. It's the most distant quake the lander has detected so far, NASA said. They also determined that the shaking occurred too far from where InSight had detected almost all of its previous large quakes -- <keyword id="12164988" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="cerberus-fossae" source="Orion">Cerberus Fossae</keyword> -- a region roughly 1,609 kilometres away where lava may have flowed within the last few million years. The scientists are working to pinpoint the source and which direction the seismic waves travelled. "One especially intriguing possibility is <keyword id="3478542" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="valles-marineris" source="Orion">Valles Marineris</keyword>, the epically long canyon system that scars the Martian equator. The approximate center of that canyon system is 9,700 kilometres from InSight,"NASA said. Further, the team also found that the August 25 quakes were different from each other. The magnitude 4.2 quake was dominated by slow, low-frequency vibrations, while fast, high-frequency vibrations characterised the magnitude 4.1 quake. The magnitude 4.1 quake was also much closer to the lander -- only about 925 kilometres away. "Despite their differences, the two August quakes do have something in common other than being big: Both occurred during the day, the windiest -- and, to a seismometer, noisiest -- time on Mars," NASA said. InSight's seismometer usually finds marsquakes at night, when the planet cools off and winds are low. But the signals from these quakes were large enough to rise above any noise caused by wind, the US space agency noted. SEE ALSO: <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/ecommerce/news/amazon-diwali-sale-starts-from-october-4/articleshow/86475984.cms">Amazon Great Indian Festival: month-long festive sale kicks off from October 4 onwards</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/aditya-birla-sun-life-amc-ipo-to-open-on-september-29-with-price-band-695-712-per-share/articleshow/86475370.cms">Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC’s ₹2768 crore IPO will open on September 29</a>

NASA's InSight lander finds biggest Marsquakes on Red Planet

<ul class="summary-list"><li>NASA's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/listen-bloop-of-meteor-falling-to-mars-nasa-insight-lander-2022-9">InSight lander</a> has detected <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-lander-detects-big-mars-quakes-2021-9">Mars quakes</a> that mostly come from one region: Cerberus Fossae.</li><li>Scientists assessing those quakes discovered evidence that there's molten lava deep within Mars.</li></ul>Scientists have long thought Mars was dead — in the geological sense.Sure, the planet is peppered with volcanoes and there are ancient lava flows in some places. But the cold, barren world seemed to have lost its volcanic fervor long ago.But now, using a seismometer on NASA's InSight lander, scientists have discovered the first evidence of molten lava deep below the Martian surface.<div type="image" title="InSight mars lander" height="2160" width="2880" msid="95127808" hostid="261" sizebytes="722398"></div>The presence of active lava could change scientists' understanding of Mars's history — from its formation, to the period when it may have hosted microbial life, to the loss of its atmosphere and the cold rock it is today. That informs how scientists understand rocky planets beyond our solar system, too, including those that could host their own life.A series of Mars quakes clued the scientists in to the potential lava hotspot. Unexpectedly, most large quakes were coming from that one spot."We found something that was really not consistent with anything we believed was true," Anna Mittelholz, a planetary scientist on the team of researchers behind the discovery, told Insider.Mittelholz recalled the words of her team's lead researcher, in reference to shaking up scientists' beliefs: "Oh no, we broke Mars."<h2>The biggest Mars quakes point to an underground chamber of magma</h2>InSight has detected more than 1,300 Mars quakes since landing on the red planet in 2018. To scientists' surprise, the most powerful tremors all came from one region full of rifts, called Cerberus Fossae.<div type="image" title="cerberus fossae aerial image shows blue landscape with deep valley" height="1440" width="1920" msid="95127810" hostid="261" sizebytes="264746"></div>In a <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41550-022-01803-y">paper</a> published in Nature Astronomy on Thursday, researchers analyzed 20 of those big quakes. Seismic waves carry information about every bit of Mars they travel through on their way to InSight. The researchers discovered that certain seismic waves were moving much more slowly than they expected."The only answer that seemed to make sense with this observation is that the region has to be hot," Mittelholz said.That indicates the presence of molten lava, or "magma," deep below the Cerberus Fossae surface. That magma moving or cooling is probably what creates those quakes, according to Mittelholz, since the rumblings originate 14 to 50 kilometers below the Martian surface, where the scientists suspect the chamber of magma is."It is possible that what we are seeing are the last remnants of this once active volcanic region or that the magma is right now moving eastward to the next location of eruption," Simon Stähler, who led the study, said in a press release.The movement is also probably causing smaller, surface-level quakes, by breaking up and moving around the planet's crust in that region."We are pretty confident that there is some volcanic activity going on down there. It's very hard to explain the data in any other way. So locally, I would say it's pretty definitive. I think the bigger question is: What would we expect globally?" Mittelholz said.InSight carries the only seismometer ever placed on Mars. It's just one station in one location, and it can't detect smaller quakes that happen far away or on the other side of the planet. So scientists have limited information about Mars's seismic activity and any other potential hotspots for quakes or magma. To get the global picture of Mars quakes and volcanic activity, NASA would need to send more seismometers to the red planet.<h2>This volcanic, quake-prone region of Mars is a mystery</h2>Spacecraft orbiting Mars have imaged plenty of fault lines along its surface — regions where there's clear disruption from subsurface tremors — so scientists expected InSight to detect quakes from many different places.Mars has surprised them, though. Almost all the quakes so far have come from Cerberus Fossae."I think it will take some figuring out what this actually means and why that's the case. What is so special about Cerberus Fossae? I wouldn't say it's what we expected to see," Mittelholz said.InSight is running out of power, as dust builds up on its solar panels. Its mission on Mars will likely end before January 2023. Then there will be no seismometer on Mars to gather new information about the planet's deep structures.<div type="image" title="two images of the insight lander's circular solar array show it clear and vibrant on the left and covered in dust on the right" height="1000" width="2000" msid="95127812" hostid="261" sizebytes="129992"></div>"I think that this InSight data set will be there for awhile. There's been so much data coming all the time that it's actually been hard to fully take all the information that's in it," Mittelholz said, adding, "So I think that a lot of studies will result, even after InSight is not operating anymore."

Mars may have molten lava, scientists discover from quakes detected by NASA's Insight lander

NASA/JPL-CaltechAn artist illustration of the Insight lander on Mars.<ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-hiring-astronauts-for-missions-to-moon-mars">NASA's</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-mars-probe-mission-landing-goals-2018-11">Insight</a> lander has detected about <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mars-quakes-nasa-insight-not-like-earthquakes-2019-7">450 quakes on Mars</a>.</li><li>An initial set of Insight research analyzed 174 of those quakes and about 10,000 "dust devil" whirlwinds that bend the ground.</li><li>The findings reveal that <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mars-settlement-california-train-astronauts-2020-1">Mars</a> has a dry, crumbled upper crust, probably from asteroid impacts.</li><li>Scientists hope that a bigger Mars quake will reveal the structure of the planet's deep interior.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul>NASA's Insight lander is revealing Mars to be shaky planet crawling with dust devils and shuddering with regular quakes."We've finally for the first time established that Mars is a seismically active planet," Bruce Banerdt, Insight's principal investigator, said in a press call about NASA's first findings from the lander's data. "It's probably close to the kinds of seismic activity you would expect to find away from the plate boundaries on the Earth."Insight landed on Mars in November 2018, but NASA just released the first six <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-020-0544-y">papers</a> about its findings in the journal Nature Geoscience. The research details results from 174 <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mars-quakes-nasa-insight-not-like-earthquakes-2019-7">quakes that t</a><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mars-quakes-nasa-insight-not-like-earthquakes-2019-7">he robot has detected</a><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mars-quakes-nasa-insight-not-like-earthquakes-2019-7"></a>, along with more than 10,000 whirlwinds, or "dust devils," that swirl above Mars's surface and warp the ground.Banerdt said Insight has continued to detect more quakes since the researchers started these six studies: "We now have about 450 quakes in our catalogue," he said.Of the quakes reported in the papers, just 24 had a magnitude above 3 on the Richter scale, and none were larger than a 4.<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/insightmarswind">NASA/JPL-Caltech</a>A view from NASA's Insight lander on the surface of Mars.The seismic activity has given scientists a peek into the makeup of Mars's crust. The quakes more closely resemble those on our moon than earthquakes - which suggests the Martian crust is more dry and broken up than scientists previously thought. The researchers said that's probably due to past asteroid impacts.Still, Insight researchers hope that a much larger quake in the future will reverberate through the planet's mantle, providing more data on what's deep below the surface.Two of the biggest quakes so far have come from the Cerberus Fossae region, which was geologically and volcanically active in the last 10 million years - more recently than anywhere else on Mars."It's the thing we don't always expect that is sometimes the most interesting result," Suzanne Smrekar, a geophysicist leading Insight's study of the Mars interior, said in the call.<h2>Whirlwinds and 'dust devils' bend the ground</h2><a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/details.php?id=1072">NASA</a>An animation of a skinny "dust devil" on the Amazonis Planitia region of northern Mars.Other seismic signals Insight has detected have come from pressure vortices formed in the air, often called "dust devils" because of their tendency to pick up dust and dirt.Similar to dust devils on Earth, these whirlwinds arise when sunlight warms the ground. Warm air then rises and causes a change in temperature and pressure that creates a vortex in which the center has lower pressure than the surrounding atmosphere.When a dust devil swirls through the area around Insight, the ground beneath it lifts slightly in response to the reduced pressure. The lander's seismometer is sensitive enough to measure those tiny movements, and the data can reveal how rigid the Martian ground is.<a href="https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/22310/insight-collecting-mars-weather-data/?site=insight">NASA/JPL-Caltech</a>An artist's concept shows NASA's Insight lander with its instruments deployed on the Martian surface. The seismometer is the round device to the left of the lander."This is an entire new world of processes for us, and we're just now starting to learn how to categorize these various different signals," Banerdt said.Insight has made a few other surprising discoveries so far. It found that the magnetic field around the lander is 10 times stronger than the magnetic field overall on Mars, which suggests that a cache of ancient magnetic rocks is buried deep beneath the surface there. Insight's measurements also suggest that Mars's magnetic field varies slightly from day to night. The researchers think this is due to changes in electric currents in the upper atmosphere.Instruments on the lander that measure the Martian atmosphere detected gravity waves: ripples that occur when buoyancy pushes air up, but gravity pulls it back down. Those instruments also detected low-frequency sound, below the range of human hearing, traveling through the Martian atmosphere. Insight has also revealed that the Martian atmosphere has irregular turbulence unexpectedly similar to that of Earth's atmosphere.The robot still has nearly a year of data-gathering left, and Banerdt is hopeful that it might detect a quake that's large enough to reverberate through the planet's interior. The accumulation of data about smaller Mars quakes will also teach scientists far more about the structure of the planet than they understand so far."We're really kind of in the same situation that geophysicists were for the Earth back in the early 1900s," Banerdt said. "We're seeing these wiggles, we're using the best analysis tools we have, but it's still a very mysterious situation, and we're kind of in the Wild West of understanding what's going on here." <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mars-home-marsha-ai-spacefactory-3d-printed-nasa-2019-6">Look inside the 3D-printed Mars home that NASA awarded $500,000</a></h3>

NASA's Insight lander is revealing Mars to be far more shaky than we thought. It picked up about 450 quakes and 10,000 ground-bending whirlwinds.

<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"></div>NASA/MOLA Team/Smithsonian InstitutionA 3D visualization of the buried Marte Vallis channels beneath the martian surface. The color scale represents the elevation of the buried channels.</div>Researchers have created new maps of <keyword id="47638" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Mars">Mars</keyword> that reveal an ancient network of underground channels, likely formed by a gigantic flood. 
The findings were published online Thursday, March 7, in the journal <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">Science</keyword>.
The discovery was made using a radar instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a spacecraft that beams back images and other information about Mars.
The Shallow Radar instrument, or SHARD, looks like a long pole that extends out from the spacecraft. It beams sound waves a few hundred feet (and up to 3,000 feet) below the surface of Mars, looking for evidence of liquid or frozen water.
<div class="image-container float_left" style="width:300px"><div class="image"></div><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/multimedia/sharad-side.html">NASA</a>The Shallow Radar instrument on the Mars Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is used to probe the the surface and subsurface of Mars for evidence of water. </div>The instrument's antenna detects the frequency of the waves that are returned after bouncing off whatever is beneath the orbiter. These waves will vary with the different densities and composition of the ground — like sand versus water. Because water is good at conducting waves, it will have a stronger radar return, for example. 
In this case, the radar tool enabled scientists to reconstruct three-dimensional maps of the biggest underground system of flood channels on Mars. The channels sit in the youngest volcanic region on the <keyword id="46100" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="planet">planet</keyword>. Until now, the source, scale and structure of the channels have not been well understood because they are buried by lava flows on the planet's surface.
With the ground-penetrating radar they were able to make out the different layers — the channels and the volcanic rock that is covering it — because of their different makeup. 
<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"></div>Image courtesy of NASA/MOLA Team/Smithsonian InstitutionThe location of the Marte Vallis channel system on Mars is highlighted by the dashed box. </div>The 600-mile channel system, known as Marte Vallis, is believed to have been carved out 500 million years ago by a major flood. This is unexpected because Mars is thought to have been cold and dry for the past 2.5 billion years. The channels are also twice as deep as originally estimated. 
Researchers have also identified the source of the floodwater — a now-buried series of fractures known as Cerberus Fossae. 
The finding tells scientists how water has shaped Mars, including the surface and climate. 
The idea that large amounts of water once flowed on Mars — both on the surface and underground — is not new. Giant craters found on the Red Planet's surface suggest that these depressions used to be filled with liquid water, based on the mineral composition of the crater floor.
Finding past evidence of water is important because it is considered a fundamental building block of life — just like carbon or oxygen. Life as we know it could not exist without water.

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NASA's InSight lander finds biggest Marsquakes on Red Planet

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Mars may have molten lava, scientists discover from quakes detected by NASA's Insight lander

Morgan McFall-Johnsen

NASA's Insight lander is revealing Mars to be far more shaky than we thought. It picked up about 450 quakes and 10,000 ground-bending whirlwinds.

Morgan McFall-Johnsen

A Gigantic Flood Carved Up Mars Not Too Long Ago

Dina Spector

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