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<div type="image" title="insight lander solar panels split image left clean panels right dust covered" height="1000" width="2000" msid="91627307" hostid="261"></div><ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-lander-detects-biggest-mars-quake-yet-2022-5">NASA</a> plans to shut down its <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-lander-may-run-out-of-power-2021-6">InSight lander</a> on <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-helicopter-captured-aerial-views-of-space-litter-2022-4">Mars</a> as it runs out of power this summer.</li><li><keyword id="11993087" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="dust" source="Orion">Dust</keyword> accumulated on the lander's solar panels, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-mars-lander-hibernating-so-batteries-dont-die-2021-4">cutting its energy production</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-caused-nasa-mars-mole-failure-soil-dusty-solar-panels-2021-1">science activities</a>.</li></ul><p><keyword id="6360409" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="nasa" source="Orion">NASA</keyword>'s $813 million <keyword id="12161869" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="insight" source="Orion">InSight</keyword> mission is coming to an early end on <keyword id="12055530" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="mars" source="Orion">Mars</keyword>.</p><p>InSight's power supply has dwindled as layers of dust have settled on its solar panels and stuck there. Today, it produces just one-tenth of the daily energy it generated at the start of the mission. In 2018, its battery charge was enough to run an electric oven for an hour and 40 minutes. These days, it could only run such an oven for 10 minutes, according to mission manager Kathya Zamora Garcia.</p><p>NASA previously approved funding to run InSight through December 2022, but agency officials said in a press conference on Tuesday that they expect power levels to dip so low by late summer that the lander will permanently end its <keyword id="11896083" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="science" source="Orion">science</keyword> operations.</p><p>"Based on our current energy level, I'm going to approximate mid-July, maybe early July," Zamora Garcia said in the briefing. She emphasized that the timeline is uncertain and depends on weather.</p><p>Since it landed on Mars in 2018, InSight's seismometer has detected more than 1,300 Mars quakes and several thousand dust devils. The seismic waves from those quakes revealed that the Martian crust is drier and more broken up from asteroid impacts than scientists thought ⁠— more like the moon than like Earth — and has at least two sublayers. The lander also revealed that Mars has a large liquid core.</p><p>"We've been able to map out the inside of Mars for the very first time in history," Bruce Banerdt, who leads the mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in the press briefing on Tuesday.</p><p>Scientists will likely continue analyzing InSight's data for years to come. Since a planet's full history is encoded in its interior layers, the findings will help researchers revisit their models of how rocky planets form, and ultimately, inform the study of worlds that could host life beyond our solar system.</p><p>"This mission is really near and dear to my heart," Banerdt said, adding, "I've been trying to get a seismometer on Mars for most of my career."</p><p>Though InSight achieved its goal of studying Mars's deep internal structure, its last year of research on the planet has been routinely interrupted by shutdowns to conserve power.</p><h2>InSight will spend the year slowly shutting down</h2><div type="image" title="insight graphic shows dust accumulation and energy drop" height="1688" width="3000" msid="91627309" hostid="261"></div><p>The lander's home in an open plain called Elysium Planitia turned out to be less windy than scientists expected, which allowed the thick accumulation of dust to build up on its solar panels. There's still a chance that a gust of wind could clean the panels and save the spacecraft, but mission leaders aren't holding out hope.</p><p>Dust is a common pest for Mars robots. The same year that InSight landed on Mars, the Opportunity rover's battery drained during a dust storm. It never powered back up. Earlier this month, NASA temporarily lost contact with its four-pound Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, as winter brought power-draining cold and increased the concentration of dust in the atmosphere.</p><p>InSight's death will be more gradual than Opportunity's. It begins in just a few weeks, when mission managers plan to move its robotic arm into "retirement pose," Zamora Garcia said. Then they'll shut off the science instruments one by one, finally saying goodbye to the seismometer in late summer.</p><p>After that, they think InSight will keep producing enough power to beam them a status update every day or so, along with the occasional photo from Mars. By the end of the year, they expect to completely lose the lander.</p><h2>NASA engineers struggled to outsmart Mars's dust and dirt</h2><p>InSight's engineering team has spent most of the lander's mission troubleshooting.</p><div type="image" title="insight lander space science platform robot with two octagon solar arrays deployed inside clean room with technicians" height="1666" width="2222" msid="91627311" hostid="261"></div><p>One of the lander's prize scientific instruments was a pile-driver called "the mole," which was designed to burrow into the Martian crust and take the planet's temperature. The mole immediately ran into a problem: The ground in Elysium Planitia was much tougher than NASA scientists expected. Instead of flowing around the mole's outer hull, providing friction for it to keep hammering deeper, the dirt stayed firm. The mole was supposed to dig 10 feet, but it got stuck just two or three centimeters below the surface.</p><p>NASA's team tried to solve the issue for two years, beaming new software to InSight to teach its robotic arm maneuvers to assist the mole, and anxiously waiting for photos that might show progress. Instead, the mole popped out of its hole.</p><div type="image" title="mars insight mole heat probe" height="697" width="929" msid="91627313" hostid="261"></div><p>Eventually, the InSight team ran out of options. At the same time, the lander was running low on power. There wasn't much energy to spare on experimental burrowing attempts. They made the tough decision to abandon their mole.</p><p>"That was probably the biggest disappointment of the mission," Banerdt said.</p><p>After that, NASA's engineers could only buy time for their lander. The team first tried instructing InSight to shake the solar panels, but that didn't remove the dust.</p><div type="image" title="nasa insight lander dusty robot platform with two octagon solar panels on mars" height="900" width="1600" msid="91627314" hostid="261"></div><p>Then they instructed the robot to scoop up dirt and slowly trickle it next to the solar panels. The thinking was that some of the large grains of sand would get caught in the wind, bounce off the solar panels, and take some stubborn dust with them.</p><p>It worked — a little. The first attempt added about 30 watt-hours to daily energy production. The team conducted six of these dirt-trickling operations, which generated enough power to keep running the seismometer regularly.</p><div type="image" title="NASA InSight Mars lander" height="1266" width="1687" msid="91627316" hostid="261"></div><p>A few months after losing its mole, in 2021, InSight engineers began hibernating the lander for the winter. NASA slowly shut down the lander's science instruments to conserve its energy through the cold months, when Mars swung far from the sun, diminishing InSight's power supply even further.</p><p>At the time, Banerdt told NASA's Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group that the lander's mission was likely to end soon after the onset of the following Martian winter, in April 2022.</p><div type="image" title="insight seismometer white dome on mars surface dirt" height="1024" width="1024" msid="91627318" hostid="261"></div><p>InSight resumed its science operations long enough to detect its biggest quakes yet — three temblors reaching 4.2 magnitude — and then an even bigger 5-magnitude quake on May 4.</p><p>"This quake is really going to be a treasure trove of scientific information when we get our teeth into it," Banerdt said.</p><p>Just three days later, on May 7, InSight's power supply fell below a level that triggers its safety mode, suspending non-essential functions, including science activities, for the second time this year.</p><p>Banerdt's team will spend the next few months conserving the lander's power and collecting as much data as possible.</p><p>"Before InSight, the interior of Mars was kind of just a big question mark," Banerdt said, adding, "Now we can actually draw a quantitatively precise picture of the inside of Mars."</p>

NASA expects Mars lander to run out of power, ending InSight's historic mission

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-lander-may-run-out-of-power-2021-6">NASA's InSight lander</a> detected the biggest <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-lander-missing-big-mars-quakes-2021-4">Mars quake</a> ever, 16 times stronger than the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-lander-detects-big-mars-quakes-2021-9">prior record</a>.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-caused-nasa-mars-mole-failure-soil-dusty-solar-panels-2021-1">InSight</a> sensed the big quake just days before a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-mars-lander-hibernating-so-batteries-dont-die-2021-4">power shortage</a> put the robot in safe mode.</li></ul><p><keyword id="6360409" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="nasa" source="Orion">NASA</keyword> has detected the largest <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-lander-detects-big-mars-quakes-2021-9">Mars quake</a> yet, a tremor nearly 16 times stronger than the previous record-holder. It shook the <keyword id="11895441" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="space" source="Orion">space</keyword> agency's <keyword id="12161869" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="insight" source="Orion">InSight</keyword> lander on May 4.</p><p>That would be a medium-sized earthquake, but it's a big one for <keyword id="12055530" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="mars" source="Orion">Mars</keyword> and the largest ever detected on another planet.</p><div type="image" title="insight seismometer white dome on mars surface dirt" height="1024" width="1024" msid="91479413" hostid="261"></div><p>"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," Bruce Banerdt, who leads the InSight team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a <a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-insight-records-monster-quake-on-mars?utm_source=iContact&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=nasajpl&amp;utm_content=mars20220509">statement</a> on Monday.</p><p>InSight landed on Mars with a seismometer in tow in 2018. Since deploying the quake-measuring instrument, it's detected more than 1,300 temblors. Most of them were small rumbles. For three years, scientists were waiting to catch a big one.</p><p>Until now, the most powerful Mars quake they detected was a 4.2 magnitude, in September. The May 4 quake has an estimated magnitude of 5, which would make it six times bigger than the September quake, releasing 15.8 times more energy. (The Richter scale of magnitude is exponential, so small increases in quake magnitude correspond to big jumps in size and strength.)</p><div type="image" title="spectrogram graph shows big bright yellow spike corresponding to major mars quake" height="1009" width="1793" msid="91479414" hostid="261"></div><p>It's too early to say where the new quake came from, what caused it, or how it resonated through the Martian interior. Still, the last three years of seismic data have shown researchers that Mars' crust is thinner than they thought, and more like the moon's crust — broken up from asteroid impacts — than Earth's. The quakes have also revealed that Mars has a molten core.</p><p>InSight's big-quake victory is clouded by a power crisis. The lander's home in an open plain turned out to be less windy than scientists expected, which allowed a thick accumulation of dust to build up on its solar panels.</p><p>NASA approved funding for InSight's mission through December 2022, but the agency said in a <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-provide-update-on-insight-mars-lander">statement</a> on Tuesday that the lander is "unlikely" to continue operations through that time period unless a surprise wind clears the dust away.</p><h2>Dust is draining InSight's power supply and menacing NASA's Mars helicopter</h2><div type="image" title="insight robot on mars covered in brown dust" height="1024" width="1024" msid="91479415" hostid="261"></div><p>The InSight team has spent more than a year <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-caused-nasa-mars-mole-failure-soil-dusty-solar-panels-2021-1">struggling to increase the robot's solar-energy production</a> in order to fuel its scientific instruments. Now, with Martian winter approaching and more dust gathering in the air, InSight is absorbing even less sunlight. Its power supply fell below a level that triggers its safety mode on Saturday, suspending non-essential functions, including <keyword id="11896083" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="science" source="Orion">science</keyword> activities, for the second time this year.</p><p>The lander lost so much power last Mars winter that NASA engineers put it into hibernation, shutting down its science instruments for the season. At the time, Banerdt told NASA's Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group that <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-lander-may-run-out-of-power-2021-6">the lander's mission was likely to end</a> soon after the onset of the next winter, in April 2022.</p><p>NASA said Tuesday that it will share an update on InSight's future and its power situation on May 17.</p><p>Dust is a persistent threat to all Mars robots. Last week, in a crater to the west, the red-brown powder plunged the iconic Ingenuity helicopter into a communications blackout for the first time. NASA re-established a connection with the drone later that day, once the sun had risen and recharged Ingenuity's batteries. But the incident has put the helicopter in a power-preserving mode similar to InSight's, shutting down non-vital functions in order to build up a battery charge.</p><div type="image" title="ingenuity helicopter on mars surface in brown dirt" height="1192" width="1592" msid="91479416" hostid="261"></div><p>If InSight doesn't survive the year, it would join the ranks of another high-tech Mars robot that cost NASA hundreds of millions of dollars and succumbed to dust. The agency's Opportunity rover never powered back up again after a dust storm drained its energy in 2018.</p>

Wavering NASA lander detects biggest Mars quake yet, even as dust drains its energy

<br /><ul><li>Scientists are using data from the first <keyword id="7562902" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="marsquake">Marsquake</keyword> recorded earlier this year to recreate the quake here on Earth in a simulator. </li><li>Understanding how ground motion works on Mars can help researchers understand the structure of the Red Planet. </li><li>During the simulation, they found that Marsquake were somewhere in between Moonquakes and Earthquakes — but there ares till a lot of other pieces to the puzzle still pending.</li></ul>Mars might be 225 million kilometers away but scientists have long tried to recreate the environment of the Red Planet here on Earth — and now, they're doing it with quakes. <br /><br />
  <div type="image" title="insight" msid="70340782" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;InSight on Mars&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div>



<br />Scientists are trying to a feel of Mars by recreating the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/nasa-spots-marsquake-on-insight-lander-mission/articleshow/69018433.cms">first Marsquake</a>, which took place on April 6 this year using a simulator — the '<a href="https://youtu.be/bSeoy8LBIt4">shake room</a>' — at the <keyword id="933841" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Swiss-Seismological-Service">Swiss Seismological Service</keyword> (SSS).<br /><br />The team in charge of the <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/what-does-a-marsquake-look-like/">Insight</a> mission's Marquake Service at ETH Zurich, a Swiss research university, is recreating the tremors and seismic waves by using data collected by the seismometer on Mars.<br /><br />
  <div type="ExtQuote" text="The goal of Insight is to understand the structure of the planet of Mars. And the primary way that we are going to do that with InSight, is by measuring Marsquakes." auname="John Clinton, Head of the Marsquake Service at ETH Zurich"></div>



<br />The goal of the simulation was to compare the seismic activity on Mars to the seismic activity on Earth and the Moon.<br /><br /><strong>Getting a feel for Mars<br /></strong><br />In order to feel the earthquake to its full extent, the scientists amplified the signals from the first Marsquake by 10 million to make distant tremors, which were <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/nasa-is-sending-a-new-solar-powered-lander-to-mars-to-check-out-whats-been-happening-for-the-past-4-5-billion-years/articleshow/63568749.cms">recorded by InSight</a>, to feel up close. On the actual <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/12-striking-facts-about-mars-that-will-make-you-a-fan-of-the-red-planet/articleshow/58948035.cms">Red Planet</a>, the amplifications are extremely low.<br /><br />
  <div type="image" title="marsquake" msid="70340769" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;The visual simulation of the first Marsquake&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div>



<br /><br />"Mars isn't as simple as we had hoped. The ground motion is not like we see on Earth," said Martin van Driel, one of the seismologists at ETH Zurich working on the project.<br /><br />In the initials findings, the researchers feel that Marsquakes are somewhere halfway between earthquakes on and Moonquakes. But, there are a lot of pieces to the puzzle that still have to be put in place, according to the team.<br /><br />
  <div type="Youtube" id="bSeoy8LBIt4" title="Marsquake: How does it feel like?" thumbUrl="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/bSeoy8LBIt4/mqdefault.jpg"></div>



<br />Normally, it's the movement of tectonic plates that cause quakes. But, Mars doesn't have any plates. Even if it did, it was millions of years ago.<br /><br />Despite the planet being plate free, it's not shake free. So Insight's mission isn't just to monitor the rumblings on Mars but help <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/nasas-insight-lander-may-not-be-as-sexy-as-a-mars-rover-but-heres-why-the-mission-matters-for-earthlings/articleshow/66818815.cms">figure out</a> what could be causing them.<br /><br /><strong>See also:</strong><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/nasa-spots-marsquake-on-insight-lander-mission/articleshow/69018433.cms">NASA detects a quake on Mars for the very first time — using sound</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/theres-a-pac-man-shaped-crater-on-mars/articleshow/64256724.cms">There’s a Pac-Man-shaped crater on Mars</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/mars-orbiter-mission-completes-4-years-in-pictures/articleshow/65972664.cms">Mars Orbiter Mission completes 4 years: In pictures</a><br />

Scientists are recreating the first Marsquake on Earth to find out what it would feel like

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-lander-may-run-out-of-power-2021-6">NASA's InSight lander</a> has finally detected <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-plan-to-bring-perseverance-rover-mars-samples-to-earth-2021-9">Mars</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-lander-missing-big-mars-quakes-2021-4">quakes</a> with magnitudes above 4.</li><li>One <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-mars-insight-lander-reports-quakes-whirlwinds-2020-2">quake</a> lasted nearly 90 minutes and was five times more energetic than the previous record-holder.</li><li>Big quakes help <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-viper-moon-rover-landing-spot-lunar-south-pole-2021-9">NASA</a> scientists peer into <keyword id="12055530" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="mars" source="Orion">Mars</keyword>' core to learn how habitable planets evolve.</li></ul><p><keyword id="6360409" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="nasa" source="Orion">NASA</keyword>'s <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-mars-lander-hibernating-so-batteries-dont-die-2021-4">Insight lander</a> was sitting silently in the empty dust plains of Mars on Saturday, as it had for the past 1,000 Martian days, when the ground began to rumble.</p><p>The shaking continued for nearly an hour and a half.</p><p>The robot beamed the data from its seismometer back to Earth, and NASA scientists realized they had what they'd been waiting for: a big quake. <keyword id="12161869" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="insight" source="Orion">Insight</keyword> had recorded a magnitude 4.2 Mars quake - the kind <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-lander-missing-big-mars-quakes-2021-4">NASA scientists had been wanting to observe</a> since Insight touched down on the red planet in November 2018.</p><p>Two other big ones recently rolled through, too: On August 25, the lander felt two quakes of magnitudes 4.2 and 4.1.</p><p>Before these, the biggest quake the lander had felt was a 3.7 in 2019.</p><div type="image" title="insight lander seismometer mars" height="1024" width="1024" msid="86468601" hostid="261"></div><p>"It looks like there are fewer large quakes on Mars, relative to the number of small quakes, than we would expect. It's a little bit puzzling," Bruce Banerdt, the principal investigator for InSight, told Insider in April.</p><p>But the Saturday quake was five times more energetic than the 3.7-magnitude rumble.</p><p>These big quakes offer a missing piece of the Martian puzzle. Scientists can use their seismic waves to learn about the makeup of Mars' core, in the same way the waves of an X-ray or CAT scan are used in the body. Getting more detailed views into Mars' insides can yield clues about how the planet was born and how it has evolved over time. That knowledge could be crucial in astronomers' efforts to find other worlds that might host life.</p><p>"By looking at Mars' core and looking at Mars' crust, and understanding that these haven't changed very much in the last 4.5 billion years, we can get a glimpse into what the Earth might have looked like very early on," Banerdt said in April. "Mars is helping us to understand just how rocky planets form and how they evolve in general."</p><h2>Mars quakes have revealed an Earth-like planet with a moon-like crust</h2><p>InSight has detected more than 700 quakes in total, and they've revealed a lot about the planet's interior already. Scientists have learned that Mars' crust is thinner than they thought, and that it's more like the moon's crust than Earth's - it's broken up from asteroid impacts.</p><p>Because the Martian crust is so dry and broken, its quakes last much longer than <keyword id="12161871" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="earthquakes" source="Orion">earthquakes</keyword>. They reverberate between cracks in the crust, and there's not as much moisture to absorb them. So the quakes InSight has felt have typically lasted 10 to 40 minutes.</p><p>Recently, scientists have also used the quakes to determine that Mars has a molten core. They're not yet sure whether a solid inner core hides beneath a molten outer core, the way it does on Earth.</p><h2>NASA creatively solved an energy crisis to keep InSight's seismometer on</h2><div type="image" title="insight mars lander red dust solar panels" height="1024" width="1024" msid="86468603" hostid="261"></div><p>InSight almost had to shut down its seismometer earlier this year. The robot was experiencing an energy shortage because dust was building up on its solar panels.</p><p>Among NASA's other Mars robots, big gusts of wind have whooshed through regularly enough to clear dust off the solar panels. But the plains where InSight sits turned out to be abnormally still.</p><p>Then to make matters worse, Mars was entering the coldest part of its year during our spring and summer, when the red planet got the furthest from the sun in its oval-shaped orbit. That meant InSight would need to funnel even more energy into its heaters to survive.</p><p>So NASA decided to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-mars-lander-hibernating-so-batteries-dont-die-2021-4">put InSight into hibernation</a>. In February, the lander began incrementally shutting off its scientific instruments in order to conserve power to keep itself warm. In June, the team was preparing to shut down the seismometer, and Banerdt told a NASA group that the lander's life <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-lander-may-run-out-of-power-2021-6">might not last past April 2022</a>, according to <a href="https://spacenews.com/dropping-power-levels-threaten-insight-mission/">SpaceNews</a>.</p><p>But then the InSight team crafted an ingenious way to clean off the solar panels. They instructed the robot to scoop up dirt and slowly trickle it next to the panels. Some of the large grains of sand got caught in the wind, bounced off the solar panels, and took some stubborn dust with them - enough to add about 30 watt-hours to Insight's daily energy production after the first attempt.</p><p>They carried out that process several more times in order to ensure a steady enough power supply to keep the seismometer running through June and July, when Mars started swinging back towards the sun.</p><p>"If we hadn't acted quickly earlier this year, we might have missed out on some great <keyword id="11896083" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="science" source="Orion">science</keyword>," Banerdt said in a <a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-insight-finds-three-big-marsquakes-thanks-to-solar-panel-dusting?utm_source=iContact&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=nasajpl&amp;utm_content=insight20210922-1ht20210922-1">press release</a>.</p>

NASA's InSight lander has finally detected 3 big Mars quakes, including one that lasted nearly 90 minutes

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-caused-nasa-mars-mole-failure-soil-dusty-solar-panels-2021-1">NASA's InSight lander</a> has detected more than 500 <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-mars-insight-lander-reports-quakes-whirlwinds-2020-2">Mars quakes</a>.</li><li>The quakes suggest the planet has an Earth-like interior wrapped in a dry, broken, moon-like crust.</li><li>But big <keyword id="47638" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Mars">Mars</keyword> quakes are mysteriously missing, and scientists aren't sure why.</li></ul><p><keyword id="6360409" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Nasa">NASA</keyword>'s <keyword id="6474108" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Insight">InSight</keyword> lander has observed more than 500 Mars quakes since it landed on the red planet in 2018. But there's a glaring hole in its catalogue: The lander has yet to detect any big rumblings.</p><p>"We would have expected a few magnitude 4 events, and maybe even a magnitude 5 at this point, given the number of smaller quakes," Bruce Banerdt, the principal investigator for InSight, told Insider.</p><p>Instead, most of the quakes have been so quiet that the average Californian wouldn't even notice them. The four biggest Mars quakes InSight's seismometer has felt ranged in magnitude from 3.1 to 3.6.</p><p>So Mars seismologists are beginning to scratch their heads. Either the InSight team has just gotten unlucky, or Mars can't produce big quakes at all. If it's the latter, Banerdt said, "we don't really know what that means yet."</p><p>The reason scientists are so interested in Mars' movement is that measuring quakes can reveal what the interior of the planet looks like. So far, Insight's readings have indicated that Mars may have Earth-like layers deep below its crust, which are wrapped in a moon-like outer shell that's been battered by asteroids.</p><div type="image" title="insight lander seismometer mars" height="1024" width="1024" msid="82073039" hostid="261"></div><p>But really big quakes would help scientists see deep into the Martian core, which could yield clues about how the planet was born and how it has evolved over time. A better understanding of Mars' insides could be crucial in our efforts to find other worlds that might host life.</p><p>"By looking at Mars' core and looking at Mars' crust, and understanding that these haven't changed very much in the last 4.5 billion years, we can get a glimpse into what the Earth might have looked like very early on," Banerdt said. "Mars is helping us to understand just how rocky planets form and how they evolve in general."</p><p>Banerdt and his team hope to figure out why they're not seeing big quakes on Mars - either so they'll know how to better look for them in a future mission, or so they can pinpoint what about the Martian interior makes major quakes so scarce.</p><h2>Mars quakes hint at an Earth-like planet with a moon-like crust</h2><div type="image" title="marsquake artist's concept" height="618" width="616" msid="82073040" hostid="261"></div><p>Listening for a planet's quakes is like doing a CAT scan. When doctors do that kind of scan, a machine sends X-rays through your body, then analyzes how the waves come back at different times and in different directions. That enables them to "piece together the 3D geometry of what's going on inside your body," Banerdt said.</p><p>With InSight, he continued, "we're doing the same thing with a planet, using Mars quakes as our 'radiation waves,' and the seismometer is the detector."</p><p>Scientists used to think that Mars must have a crust like Earth's, which has been smoothed out by geologic activity like the movement of tectonic plates and the bubbling of molten magma from below. But InSight's seismometer has painted a more nuanced picture.</p><p>"It's somewhere between the moon and the Earth in the way it transmits seismic waves," Banerdt said.</p><p>On the moon, the crust has been broken up because of asteroid impacts, which gives seismic waves more cracks and surfaces to bounce off. It's as if they're doing a "drunken walk," Banerdt said, and that leads moon quakes to last for hours.</p><div type="image" title="moon astronauts apollo lunar roving vehicle" height="3982" width="5309" msid="82073046" hostid="261"></div><p>On Earth, seismic waves don't reverberate that much, so they weaken quickly. Moisture in our planet's crust also allows it to absorb some of their energy. As a result, <keyword id="54595" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Earthquakes">earthquakes</keyword> usually last just a few seconds, though really big ones can last minutes.</p><p>Mars quakes, meanwhile, generally seem to last about 10 to 40 minutes.</p><p>The first few hundred tremblings InSight picked up on Mars behaved similarly to those on the moon. But because they were so small, they only enabled scientists to analyze the makeup of the upper layer of the crust. The handful of larger quakes - which gave the InSight team a peek at deeper layers - have acted more like earthquakes.</p><p>"I think maybe Mars has an outer layer which is rather lunar-like," Banerdt said. "It's quite broken up by impacts. But deeper into the planet, into the mantle, it appears like it might be more Earth-like."</p><h2>The mystery of the missing Big One</h2><div type="image" title="mars crater" height="768" width="1024" msid="82073049" hostid="261"></div><p>InSight's Mars quakes follow a similar pattern to earthquakes: The higher the magnitude, the rarer the quake.</p><p>"You get fewer and fewer quakes as as you get larger and larger numbers, and it follows a sort of an exponential law," Banerdt said.</p><p>So far, the tail end of that exponential graph is missing. It could just be a quiet period on Mars - planets can have spells with lots of seismic activity and dry periods with no big quakes. But Banerdt suspects that InSight's data points to a larger trend.</p><p>"It looks like there are fewer large quakes on Mars, relative to the number of small quakes, than we would expect. It's a little bit puzzling," he said. "We're still trying to figure out what explanations for that could be."</p><p>It's possible that NASA just didn't pick a good spot to hunt for big quakes. On Earth, there are plenty of areas that never see major earthquakes. Or maybe Mars just never shakes that much.</p><p>"It could be also related to the gravity, it could be related to the thickness of the brittle layer, it could be related to a lot of things. But right now, we really don't have a handle on that," Banerdt said. "It's an ongoing area of research."</p><h2>InSight is about to hibernate through 'optimum' quake time</h2><div type="image" title="insight mars lander red dust solar panels" height="1024" width="1024" msid="82073050" hostid="261"></div><p>The longer InSight waits and listens, the more likely it is to catch a big quake. Unfortunately, the lander is about to take a weeks-long break during peak quake-listening time.</p><p>That's because the Elysium Planitia, where InSight landed, has surprised NASA with its lack of wind. There is some wind - enough to drown out the seismic noise of some faraway quakes. But it's not enough to keep red Martian dust off of InSight's solar panels.</p><p>Now, the Martian winter is setting in and a thick layer of dust is taxing the robot's energy production. So NASA has decided to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-mars-lander-hibernating-so-batteries-dont-die-2021-4">put InSight into hibernation</a>. In February, the lander began incrementally shutting off its scientific instruments, conserving power to keep itself warm.</p><p>In June, NASA expects to shut down InSight's scientific operations entirely until Mars swings back toward the sun in July.</p><p>The seismometer is still running, but Banerdt expects to shut it down in a month or so. That will be in the middle of the "optimum" time for detecting Mars quakes, he said, since winds die down in the depths of winter. Reduced windiness allows the seismometer to pick up distant quakes with less interference.</p><p>"We're hoping to keep the seismometer going as long as we can, then start it up again - you know, after we pass this low-power time - turn it on as quickly as we can," Banerdt said. "But we will probably be missing some things in between."</p><p>If InSight survives its power shortage, the seismometer could keep listening for quakes into 2022. </p>

NASA's InSight lander has detected more than 500 Mars quakes, but the big ones are mysteriously missing

<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="6360409" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Nasa">NASA</keyword>'s <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-mars-lander-hibernating-so-batteries-dont-die-2021-4?utm_source=yahoo.com&amp;utm_medium=referralrral">InSight lander</a> just gave scientists a peek at the make-up of <keyword id="47638" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Mars">Mars</keyword>'s core, crust, and mantle.</li><li>A trio of new studies reveal how the interior structure of Mars compares to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/earth-core-lopsided-growing-faster-on-one-side-2021-6#:~:text=Earth's%20core%20is%20growing%20lopsidedly,least%20half%20a%20billion%20years&amp;text=In%20the%20core's%20eastern%20half,may%20affect%20Earth's%20magnetic%20field.agnetic%20field.">that of Earth</a>.</li><li>Evidence also suggests Mars had a strong, protective <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/magnetic-field-weak-spot-linked-pieces-planet-inside-earth-2021-4#:~:text=Remnants%20of%20an%20ancient%20planet,spot%20in%20the%20magnetic%20field&amp;text=Earth's%20magnetic%20field%2C%20which%20protects%20it%20from%20solar%20radiation%2C%20has,and%20sank%20into%20the%20mantle.0mantle.">magnetic field</a> like Earth does, then lost it.</li></ul><p>For the first time, we know what the interior of another planet similar to ours looks like.</p><p>In a <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/lookup/google-scholar?link_type=googlescholar&amp;gs_type=article&amp;q_txt=.%2C+Science+373%2C+438+(2021).+(2021).">trio</a> <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/lookup/google-scholar?link_type=googlescholar&amp;gs_type=article&amp;q_txt=.%2C+Science+373%2C+434+(2021).+(2021).">of</a> <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/lookup/google-scholar?link_type=googlescholar&amp;gs_type=article&amp;q_txt=.%2C+Science+373%2C+443+(2021).+(2021).">studies</a> published Thursday in the journal <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">Science</keyword>, an international team of more than 40 scientists revealed how the Mars's core, mantle, and crust contrast with Earth's.</p><p>By analyzing seismic data collected by <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-mars-lander-hibernating-so-batteries-dont-die-2021-4?utm_source=yahoo.com&amp;utm_medium=referralrral">NASA's InSight lander</a> on the red planet, the researchers estimated of the size of Mars's core, the thickness of its crust, and the composition of its mantle (the layer in between).</p><p>"We only have this kind of information for the Earth and <keyword id="42440" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Moon">moon</keyword>," Brigitte Knapmeyer-Endrun, a planetary seismologist at the University of Cologne and co-author of the new research, told Insider. "But the moon we can't compare to Earth very well because it's so much smaller."</p><p>Mars, however, is our tinier, terrestrial twin. The new studies suggest its core is less dense than Earth's but scaled to size. </p><h2>Beaming seismic waves through Mars's heart</h2><div type="image" title="insight lander seismometer mars" height="768" width="1024" msid="84664489" hostid="261"></div><p>InSight, NASA's $828 million robotic science station, landed on Mars in November 2018. Since then, the lander has used its seismometers - which detect and record earthquakes - to listen for similar quakes on Mars.</p><p>Seismic waves from 12 of these marsquakes, which travel right through the middle of the planet and bounce off the layers inside, helped Knapmeyer's group to map the boundaries of the crust and core. </p><p>"Imagine you have a closed box and you want to find out what's inside," Knapmeyer said. "This method is like taking that box and putting it into an X-ray." </p><h2>Mars has a fatter core than scientists thought</h2><div type="image" title="mars core mantle crust illustration" height="2000" width="2000" msid="84664490" hostid="261"></div>InSight's findings suggest Mars has a large liquid core that starts almost halfway to the planet's center, nearly 1,000 miles beneath the surface. <p>Its 1,143-mile radius was "larger than expected," Amir Khan, a seismologist from ETH Zurich in Switzerland and a study co-author, told Insider.</p><p>The boundary of Earth's liquid outer core - which encircles a solid metal inner core - starts deeper than Mars's does, at 1,800 feet.</p><p>That said, Earth is nearly twice as wide as Mars is, and its core is about twice as wide too.</p><p>Unlike Earth's core which is dominated by nickel and iron, Mars's less dense core contains lighter elements like hydrogen and oxygen.</p><p>The red planet appears to lack an inner core, according to Simon Stähler, another study co-author and Khan's colleague at ETH.</p><p>"We don't know, we'll be looking for this," Stähler told Insider, adding, "temperatures are likely too high for an inner core to form."</p><p>A more engorged core also means Mars's mantle is relatively thinner compared to Earth. It also lacks a dense layer of mineral called bridgemanite that keeps Earth's mantle stable under high pressure, which could explain the core's unexpected size.</p><p>"Mineralogically speaking the mantle of Mars is a 'simpler' version of that of Earth," Khan said.</p><h2>Mars had, and lost, its protective magnetic field</h2><div type="image" title="magnetic field" height="320" width="1038" msid="84664491" hostid="261"></div><p>Earth's core plays a key role in protecting the planet from dangerous solar wind and radiation. Swirling <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/02/magnetic-north-update-navigation-maps/">liquid iron in the outer core</a> generates a magnetic field that stretches all the way from there to the <keyword id="41531" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="space">space</keyword> surrounding our planet.</p><div type="image" title="illustration of earth's core/mantle layers" height="2500" width="2500" msid="84664492" hostid="261"></div><p>That swirl happens, in part, because of a process in which hotter, lighter material from the outer core rises into the mantle above. There, it swaps places with cooler, denser mantle material, which sinks into the core below. This is known as convection. </p><p>While Mars has a liquid core, it lacks that swirling engine, known as a dynamo.</p><p>Bits of magnetized Martian crust suggest the planet did have a magnetic field once, between 4 billion and 4.5 billion years ago. The absence of the bridgemanite layer in Mars's mantle could explain why its dynamo shut off about 300,000 years after the planet formed. Without that layer, Mars's interior leached heat much faster, crippling the convection happening there.</p><p>Plus, "Mars is smaller and therefore cools faster than Earth," Stähler said. "Different planet - different story."</p><h2>The red planet's crust is as thick as Earth's</h2><div type="image" title="insight mars lander nasa" height="2520" width="3360" msid="84664493" hostid="261"></div><p>The two planets' crusts are similarly thick, according to Knapmeyer, though Mars's crust has two or three layers. </p><p>The average thickness of the Martian crust is between 14 and 44 miles. Earth's crustal thickness varies wildly - under the oceans, it <a href="https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/explainer-earth-layer-layer">can be as narrow as 3 miles</a> - yet beneath the continents, it's between 18 and 44 miles thick.</p><p>But Mars crust is really old and static compared to Earth's, she said. Our planet's shell is broken up into tectonic plates that surf on top of the mantle. Thanks to convection, these plates sometimes collide or sink under one another, meaning new bits of crust emerged all the time.</p><p>Mars lacks those plate tectonics, so there's been no new crust generated since the planet's crust formed some 4.5 billion years ago. </p><p>The planet was once "probably complete molten" and that hot liquid mass then differentiated into a crust, mantle, and core, Khan said. </p><p>The absence of plate tectonics is linked, in part, to sluggish convection in the mantle, according to Stähler. Lack of water plays a role too.</p><p>"Water lubricates the plate motion on Earth," Stähler said. "On Mars, the water was probably lost very early, once there was no dynamo anymore and the atmosphere was blown away by solar wind."</p><h2>InSight's next target? The moon</h2><div type="image" title="the moon surface" height="900" width="1200" msid="84664495" hostid="261"></div><p>Scientists had previously used observation of Mars's mass, diameter, and rotation from space to predict what its internal layers might look like. </p><p>Stähler was pleased InSight's findings matched earlier predictions.</p><p>"We could confirm very rough estimates made from orbit. So now we know how much we can trust estimates of Venus's or Mercury's inner structure," he said.</p><p>InSight's mission on the red planet is expected to last until the end of 2022, but the lander's scientific explorations won't end next year. InSight will head to the moon as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program in 2024, Stähler said.</p>

NASA's InSight Mars lander just gave scientists an unprecedented look at the guts of the red planet. Here's how they compare to Earth's.

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0lwFLPiZEE">Lockheed Martin/YouTube</a></span></p><p class="caption">An illustration of NASA's InSight probe attempting to land on the surface of Mars</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li><strong>NASA will try to land its <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/nasa-insight-lander" target="_blank" rel="noopener">InSight probe</a> on the surface of the red planet around 3 p.m. ET on Monday.</strong></li><li><strong>The robotic lander must survive "seven minutes of terror" before touching down and beginning a series of unprecedented scientific firsts.</strong></li><li><strong>InSight won't move around <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/mars" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mars</a>, but it could be the first mission to measure the "vital signs" of the planet and decode its internal structure.</strong></li><li><strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/nasa" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NASA</a> will also listen for "marsquakes" caused by meteorite impacts and tectonic movements, which could reveal the interior structure of the 4.6-billion-year-old world.</strong></li></ul><p>On Cyber Monday, while online shoppers hunt for deals, NASA will be trying to stick its first landing of a robot on the surface of Mars in six years.</p><p>The roughly $830-million mission is called <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-lander-2018-3">InSight</a>, which is short for "Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport."</p><p>NASA <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-video-show-blast-off-as-nasa-insight-probe-launches-to-mars-2018-5">rocketed</a> the InSight probe toward the red planet on May 5. The lander, which weighs about 789 lbs, is expected to complete a risky descent sequence around 3 p.m. ET on Monday, November 26. Part of that process is known as the "seven minutes of terror."</p><p>If all goes well, the golf-cart-size lander will be the first robot to touch down on Martian soil since NASA's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nuclear-powered-spacecraft-nasa-history-2017-3">nuclear-powered</a> Curiosity rover, which landed there in August 2012.</p><p><em><strong>Read more</strong>: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mars-facts-statistics-2017-5">13 incredible facts you probably didn't know about the red planet</a></em></p><p>Scientists hope that InSight's two-year mission will probe Mars in ways they've only dreamed of until now.</p><p>"All of our past missions have really been surface missions," <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/about/highlights/braun_bio.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Robert Braun</a>, NASA's former chief technologist, told Business Insider. "InSight's a very different mission in the sense that it is peering into the past by studying, really, the interior of Mars. In doing so, we're going to learn about Mars, but also about the early history of the Earth."</p><p>First, however, InSight will have to get safely to the surface.</p><h2>How InSight might survive '7 minutes of terror'</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://images.nasa.gov/details-PIA22100.html">NASA/JPL-Caltech</a></span></p><p class="caption">An illustration of NASA's InSight Mars probe in the "seven minutes of terror" phase of its descent to the Martian surface.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Getting to Mars is relatively easy.</p><p>That's because modern rockets are safer and more reliable to launch than ever before. In fact, the vehicle that sent InSight toward Mars - an Atlas V rocket built by United Launch Alliance - has had only one partial failure since its debut in 2002.</p><p>Landing on the red planet, however, is one of the most challenging tasks an aerospace engineer can accomplish. About a third of robots sent there never make it.</p><p>"Although we've done it before, landing on Mars is hard, and this mission is no different," Rob Manning, the chief engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDSbUpmRksI" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a video</a>. "It takes thousands of steps to go from the top of the atmosphere to the surface, and each one of them has to work perfectly."</p><p>The <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mars-facts-statistics-2017-5">Martian atmosphere is about 1% as thick as Earth's</a>. But that's still plenty of air to completely destroy a spacecraft like InSight, which will be moving at about 12,500 mph when it arrives at the red planet.</p><p>NASA tries to take advantage of the Martian atmosphere by putting its robots in an entry capsule with a heat shield. This helps reduce the spacecraft's speed while also protecting it from 1,400-degree-Celsius temperatures - hot enough to melt steel - caused by plowing through the thin Martian air.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0lwFLPiZEE">Lockheed Martin/YouTube</a></span></p><p class="caption">An animation of NASA's InSight probe attempting to land on the surface of Mars.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>However, striking the atmosphere at anything other than the perfect angle - about 12 degrees, Manning said - can end a mission. Any shallower than this, and an entry capsule will "skip" off the atmosphere and out into deep space. Any deeper, and a robot gets vaporized.</p><p>This phase - when an entry capsule detaches from its mothership and descends - is sometimes called the seven minutes of terror. This is because NASA can't "hear" from its spacecraft for roughly seven minutes, and won't know if a landing has succeeded or failed until a radio signal arrives (or doesn't).</p><p>This time around, though, NASA is trying something new: It sent two briefcase-size satellites called MarsCubeOne with Insight. Both cubesats are <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/planet-mars-image-nasa-marco-cubesat-2018-10">trailing the lander en route to Mars</a>, and they'll help relay landing data home.</p><p>"They'll be broadcasting that back to Earth so we know what's exactly happening at each step of the entry, descent, and landing process," <a href="https://mars.nasa.gov/people/info.cfm?id=22920" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tom Hoffman</a>, the InSight mission's payload manager, said during a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz4f7zlGETI" target="_blank" rel="noopener">press briefing</a> in October.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://images.nasa.gov/details-PIA22318.html">NASA/JPL-Caltech</a></span></p><p class="caption">An engineer tests the solar arrays of NASA's Mars Cube One satellite, or MarCO.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Once InSight plows through enough of the Martian atmosphere to not burn up, its entry capsule will deploy a big supersonic parachute, then discard the heat shield seconds later.</p><p>InSight's dangerous journey isn't over at this point. The robot still has to deploy three landing legs and use radar to calculate how close it is to the ground - NASA can't control the robot remotely in real time because it takes light (and radio signals) about 15 minutes to travel to and from Mars.</p><p>About a mile above the surface of Mars, InSight will drop out of its protective capsule, fire its retro-rocket engines, and try to touch down without crashing or tipping over.</p><h2>How InSight will probe the ancient secrets of Mars - and Earth</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://images.nasa.gov/details-PIA16078.html">NASA/JPL</a></span></p><p class="caption">A cutaway illustration showing what scientists think the interior of planet Mars might look like.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>InSight will try to land in a region known as <a href="https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/timeline/prelaunch/landing-site-selection/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Elysium Planitia</a>, which is a relatively flat place close to the Martian equator. If the robot safely lands and unfurls its two circular solar panels, NASA will begin its mission in earnest.</p><p>Like InSight's nearly identical predecessor mission, the Phoenix Mars Lander, the probe won't move locations. But unlike Phoenix, which dug for water in Martian soil for a few months in 2008, InSight hopes to last for two Earth years.</p><p>During that time, it will perform the first "<a href="https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/mission/science/overview/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">checkup</a>" of the 4.6-billion-year-old planet.</p><p>"InSight's goal is to study the interior of Mars and take the planet's vital signs, its pulse, and temperature," NASA said on its mission <a href="https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/timeline/landing/summary/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">website</a>. "To look deep into Mars, the lander must be at a place where it can stay still and quiet for its entire mission. That's why scientists chose Elysium Planitia as InSight's home."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/timeline/prelaunch/landing-site-selection/">NASA; Business Insider</a></span></p><p class="caption">NASA plans to land its InSight robot at Elysium Planitia near the Martian equator.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Once InSight is powered up and in communication with Earth, one of its first tasks will be to unfurl a robotic arm.</p><p>InSight will use that robotic appendage to place a dome down on the Martian surface. The dome will contain six extremely sensitive vibration-detection devices called seismometers.</p><p>Seismometers on the Earth and the moon (<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/apollo-moon-landing-photos-nasa-1969-2018-7">Apollo astronauts deployed some on the lunar surface</a>) have recorded earthquakes and moonquakes, which helped scientists figure out the internal structure of those rocky worlds. On Mars, NASA researchers hope to accomplish a similar feat.</p><p>Whenever a meteorite strikes Mars, or there's a landslide, or a big blob of magma suddenly shifts, or there's tectonic movement, InSight's seismometer should detect such vibrations. The devices can even record seismic activity from all the way across the planet.</p><p>Over time, data about marsquakes could reveal hitherto unknown information about the internal structure of the planet.</p><p>One of the most challenging tasks InSight will attempt, though, is drilling a heat probe deep into the ground. The probe will slowly drill down and stop every so often to heat up. Then a sensor will detect how long it takes that warmth to dissipate.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>NASA/JPL-Caltech</span></p><p class="caption">An artist illustration of the InSight lander on Mars.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The probe is expected to dig 16 feet down - far deeper than any previous Mars mission has ever reached with scoops, shovels, or drills.</p><p>"When we get down that deep, we'll get away from all of the temperature variations of the surface," Suzanne Smrekar, the mission's deputy principle investigator, said during a press briefing. "That tells us about the heat coming out of the planet - that energy that's available for driving geologic activity."</p><p>Back on the surface, InSight will also use a sensitive radio <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> experiment to see how subtly Mars shifts during its two-Earth-year-long orbit around the sun. Such data should tell researchers what is going on in the deepest parts of the planet's core.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://images.nasa.gov/details-NHQ201810310005.html">NASA/Bill Ingalls</a></span></p><p class="caption">The lead scientists on the InSight mission to Mars, Bruce Banerdt, speaks during a press conference on October 31, 2018.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The ultimate goal is to figure out how Mars formed and what happened to the planet since then. Scientists know that Mars once generated an atmosphere-protecting magnetic dynamo, as Earth still does today. But the Martian core's dynamo eventually shut down and the planet's protective shield faded, which allowed the sun to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-mars-lost-water-atmosphere-solar-wind-2015-11">blow away Mars' atmosphere</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mars-ocean-mega-tsunami-surface-2016-5">oceans of water</a>.</p><p>In probing that history, scientists think we're bound to learn about our own planet's origins.</p><p>"Earth ... is a big planet that holds a lot of heat, a lot of energy, and it's been very geologically active over its entire history. So most of the record of the early processes that formed the Earth have been erased," Hoffman said. "We'd like to have a planet that's just a little bit calmer and that can retain that that evidence."</p><p>Mars, which is similar to Earth but has remained almost frozen in time, is thus the perfect place to go looking.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-humans-look-like-on-mars-2018-5">What humans will look like on Mars</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

NASA's InSight robot is about to land on Mars. Here's how it might survive '7 minutes of terror' and make incredible discoveries about the red planet - and Earth, too.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Mars just scored another <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-discovers-potential-alien-life-evidence-biosignature-perseverance-rover-mars-2024-7">point in favor of alien life</a>.</li><li>Scientists discovered signs of an ocean's worth of liquid water miles below Mars' surface.</li></ul><p>Mars is looking more and more like a place for <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-nasa-could-tell-us-aliens-are-real-2023-2">NASA to find the first signs of alien life</a>.</p><p>Scientists discovered evidence of a <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/groundwater-pumping-causes-earth-rotational-pole-to-shift-study-finds-2023-7">reservoir of liquid water</a> seven to 13 miles below the Martian surface, lingering in the pores of the planet's crust.</p><p>They believe there's enough to cover the entire planet with <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/saturns-death-star-moon-mimas-may-have-a-secret-ocean-2022-1">an ocean</a> about one mile deep.</p><p>The water, if it exists, is <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-discover-underground-moon-cave-astronauts-could-live-2024-7">too deep to access</a> in the foreseeable future. Still, it's another promising sign that Mars could one day yield the most disruptive discovery in human history — that of life beyond Earth.</p><p>The discovery, announced Monday, comes just weeks after <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asks-help-retrieving-perseverance-mars-samples-alien-life-2024-4">NASA's Perseverance rover</a> drilled a rock sample on Mars that could contain evidence of microbial life from a bygone era.</p><div type="image" title="gritty yellow ring with speckled solid rock sample inside" height="1400" width="1471" msid="112479167" hostid="261" sizebytes="125234"></div><p>Ancient remnants of long-extinct <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-no-contact-with-aliens-2019-9">alien life</a> are all NASA can hope for on the parched Martian surface. But any sizeable source of liquid water,<strong> </strong>like these potential underground reservoirs, is a place to check for active microbial life — even though water 10 miles underground would never see the light of day.</p><p>"It's certainly true on Earth — deep, deep mines host life, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/seamount-new-species-schmidt-ocean-institute-expedition-marine-chile-2024-2">the bottom of the ocean hosts life</a>. We haven't found any evidence for life on Mars, but at least we have identified a place that should, in principle, be able to sustain life," Michael Manga, a co-author of the study and planetary scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://news.berkeley.edu/2024/08/12/scientists-find-oceans-of-water-on-mars-its-just-too-deep-to-tap/">said</a> in a press release.</p><h2 id="aaa09a5d-96fd-42cc-8177-e2c4153862f8">Marsquakes helped NASA find water clues</h2><p>When <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-lander-detects-big-mars-quakes-2021-9">NASA put a seismometer on Mars</a>, aboard its InSight lander, the goal was to peer into the planet's interior.</p><div type="image" title="mars brown planet with blue-black and white splotches in the black of space" height="1920" width="1920" msid="112479165" hostid="261" sizebytes="112220"></div><p>Though <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-mars-lander-mission-ending-dust-power-crisis-2022-12">the InSight mission ended</a> in 2022, scientists are still sifting through all the data it collected in hopes of learning something new about Mars's depths.</p><p>InSight's seismometer instrument <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-lander-missing-big-mars-quakes-2021-4">measured Marsquake activity</a>, mapping seismic waves. As those waves move through the Martian interior, their timing and the direction they travel are influenced by the material they're traveling through deep underground.</p><p>So, by measuring the waves, the scientists of the new study<strong> </strong>can tell what's underneath the planet's surface. It's similar to how the waves of an X-ray or CAT scan can reveal what's inside a human body.</p><p>Manga and his colleagues used mathematical modeling to determine that a deep layer of fractured igneous rock, saturated with water, best explains InSight's data. Their findings were <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2409983121">published</a> in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday.</p><div type="image" title="illustration of a column cutout of mars planetary interior beneath the insight lander with a deep layer of cracked rock with water in the cracks" height="825" width="1000" msid="112479161" hostid="261" sizebytes="95798"></div><h2 id="a0164bcd-c556-4a64-a741-6c029fdf4ce2">A clue in a Mars mystery</h2><p>In addition to being downright fascinating and potentially overturning humanity's conception of Mars as a lifeless, dry red rock, the new findings may help solve one of the planet's greatest mysteries: where all the water went.</p><p>Mars's surface was once lush with water. Heck, the Perseverance rover is exploring a basin that <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-mars-rover-landing-jezero-crater-search-for-alien-life-2021-2">used to be a giant lake and river delta</a>.</p><p>But the planet didn't have a strong magnetic field, like Earth's, to help it hold onto its atmosphere. As a result, the sun's radiation wore away what little protective layer of atmospheric gases existed, and the planet dried up.</p><p>By about 3 billion years ago, all the water was gone. Some of it is still frozen in Mars's ice caps. Perhaps some simply vaporized in the harsh space environment. But scientists haven't really figured out where it all went.</p><p>The new findings suggest some of the water seeped deep into the planet's crust.</p>

Another point for life on Mars: Signs of liquid water discovered under the planet's surface

<br /><ul><li><keyword id="6360409" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Nasa">NASA</keyword>’s Mars InSight lander just detected its first significant quake on Mars.</li><li>Researchers on the project have analysed that the quake is more moon-like in nature than earth-like.</li><li>The discovery of quakes on Mars to kick off a new field of study — Martian seismology.</li></ul>NASA’s Mars InSight lander, which <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/nasas-new-mars-mission-just-landed--and-it-could-reveal-why-earth-is-habitable-but-the-red-planet-is-not/articleshow/66818558.cms">landed</a> on the Red Planet on 26 November, has <a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7383">successfully</a> measured and recorded a ‘Marsquake’ for the very first time.<br /><br />The seismic signal was recorded on April 6 — Insight’s 128th day on Mars — and it’s the first tremor to have been recorded that is coming from inside the planet rather than being caused by extraneous forces.<br /><br />
  <div type="Youtube" id="DLBP-5KoSCc" title="First Likely Marsquake Heard by NASA's InSight" thumbUrl="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/DLBP-5KoSCc/mqdefault.jpg"></div>



<br />Even though it’s still unknown what caused the quake, scientists at NASA and the National Centre for Space Studies (CNES) — the French apex space agency — have <a href="https://presse.cnes.fr/en/world-first-french-seis-instrument-detects-marsquake">determined</a> that the quakes are more moon-like in nature than similar to earthquakes. <br /><br />
  <div type="ExtQuote" text="The Martian Sol 128 event is exciting because its size and longer duration fit the profile of moonquakes detected on the lunar surface during the Apollo missions." auname="Lori Glaze, Planetary Science Division director at NASA Headquarters"></div>



<br />One of the reasons for this is that Mars does not <a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/learn/video/mars-in-a-minute-how-did-mars-get-such-enormous-mountains/">have</a> functioning tectonic plates right or even ones that are clearly defined. Even if the plates did exist or move around— that was a long time <a href="https://www.space.com/17087-mars-surface-marsquakes-plate-tectonics.html">ago</a>. <br /><br />According to Bruce Banerdt, the principle investigator on the InSight mission, the discovery of ‘Marsquakes’ kicks off a new field of study — Martian seismology.<br /><br />
  <div type="ExtQuote" text="We've been collecting background noise up until now, but this first event officially kicks off a new field: Martian seismology." auname="Bruce Banerdt, InSight Principal Investigator, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory"></div>



<br /><br />But, NASA also points out that a quake of this size would barely be detectable on Earth. The only reason it’s significant on Mars is because the planet is so quiet. Three more quakes were also detected on Mars but they were ever weaker. Nonetheless, researchers on the project are optimistic that there are bigger quakes to come in the future.<br /><br />
  <div type="ExtQuote" text="We’re starting to have many small quakes. By the end of the mission we’ll have a super big quake." auname="Philippe Lognonné, SEIS team lead at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP)"></div>



<br />InSight’s measurements of significant seismological activity will help with the lander’s <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/nasas-insight-lander-may-not-be-as-sexy-as-a-mars-rover-but-heres-why-the-mission-matters-for-earthlings/articleshow/66818815.cms">primary mission</a> to study the interior of Mars. <br /><br />While NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JLP) leads the Insight mission, CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument that helped detect the tremors.<br /><br /><strong>See also:<br /></strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/nasas-insight-lander-may-not-be-as-sexy-as-a-mars-rover-but-heres-why-the-mission-matters-for-earthlings/articleshow/66818815.cms"></a><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/nasas-new-mars-mission-just-landed--and-it-could-reveal-why-earth-is-habitable-but-the-red-planet-is-not/articleshow/66818558.cms">NASA's new Mars mission just landed - and it could reveal why Earth is habitable but the red planet is not</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/nasas-insight-lander-may-not-be-as-sexy-as-a-mars-rover-but-heres-why-the-mission-matters-for-earthlings/articleshow/66818815.cms">NASA's InSight lander may not be as sexy as a Mars rover, but here's why the mission matters for Earthlings</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/nasa-mars-insight-lander-will-be-the-first-spacecraft-to-study-planets-deep-interior/articleshow/66803762.cms">NASA Mars InSight lander will be the first spacecraft to study planet's deep interior</a><br />

NASA detects a quake on Mars for the very first time — using sound

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/nasa-insight-lander">NASA's Insight lander</a>, the first mission to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/mars">Mars</a> since 2012, is scheduled to land on the red planet Monday, November 26.</li><li>Once there, the lander will study Mars' temperature and check for marsquakes.</li><li>The landing is expected to be difficult because of the planet's thin atmosphere and potential dust storms.</li></ul><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/nasa-insight-lander">NASA's</a><span><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/nasa-insight-lander">&#xa0;InSight lander</a>, the first mission to study the deep interior of Mars, is scheduled to complete its six-month trip to the red planet on Monday afternoon.&#xa0;</span><span></span></p><p>InSight, the first spacecraft NASA has sent to Mars since the Curiosity rover landed there in 2012, will&#xa0;<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-insight-lander-2018-3">drill about 16 feet down</a> to check the red planet's temperature and insert&#xa0;a seismometer into Martian soil to study marsquakes.</p><p>But before it can do any of that, the spacecraft has to land.&#xa0;</p><p><span>It won't be easy - the atmosphere on Mars is very thin compared to Earth's, so it does not produce enough friction for a spacecraft to slow down to a safe landing speed.&#xa0;Only 40% of missions to Mars have survived the landing; the United States is the only country to have successfully landed anything on the red planet.</span></p><p><span>According to NASA, the InSight lander will enter the Martian atmosphere going about 12,300 mph. It will only have about 6.5 minutes to slow down to about 5 mph, which it will do by using a parachute and firing descent thrusters. </span><span>If everything goes according to plan, the spacecraft is expected to land&#xa0;on a flat, stable surface at Elysium Planitia - a broad Martian plain with few rocks or boulders - at about 3 p.m. EST on Monday.&#xa0;</span></p><p><span>InSight's design, including its heat shield and parachute, <a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/press_kits/insight/landing/">are very similar</a> to that of NASA's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/2008/5/nasa-s-phoenix-mars-landing-where-to-watch-on-the-web">Phoenix spacecraft</a>, which successfully landed near Mars' north pole in 2008. However, InSight will have more mass when it enters the Martian atmosphere than Phoenix did, which makes the landing more challenging. The new spacecraft is also expected to touch down at a higher elevation than Phoenix did, which means it will have less atmosphere to rely on for slowing down.&#xa0;</span></p><p><span>The InSight mission is led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.</span><span>&#xa0;InSight, which <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/watch-nasa-mars-insight-lander-launch-live-2018-5">set off from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base</a> in May, was the first interplanetary rocket that NASA has launched from the West Coast. The lander left Earth accompanied by two small Mars-bound satellites that are collectively called Mars Cube One.</span><span></span></p><p><em><strong>Read more:</strong> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/planet-mars-image-nasa-marco-cubesat-2018-10">A tiny satellite bound for Mars just snapped a picture that makes the red planet look puny and insignificant</a></em></p><p><span>Once set up, InSight will stretch 20 feet long and weigh about 800 pounds. It'll be powered by two 7-foot-wide solar arrays. To measure marsquakes (which are similar to earthquakes but, of course, not on Earth), the lander has</span><span>&#xa0;antennas that can record how much the planet shakes and wobbles. This data could help scientists determine whether Mars' core is solid or liquid.&#xa0;</span></p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p><span> The lander is supposed to collect data on Mars until at least November 2020.&#xa0;</span>NASA hopes to use this information to draw new comparisons between the interiors of Earth and the red planet. Eventually, the research could be used to learn more about which types of Earth-like exoplanets could support life.&#xa0;</p><p><span>On Monday, NASA will be relying on other spacecraft and radio telescopes on Earth to monitor InSight's radio signals and determine when it reaches the red planet.&#xa0;</span>The lander's design should allow it to<span>&#xa0;touch down safely on Monday even if it reaches Elysium Planitia during a dust storm, thanks to the thick heat shield that protects InSight from dust.&#xa0;</span><span></span></p><p>Although the entire&#xa0;<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/how-nasa-will-know-when-insight-touches-down">landing won't be captured on video</a>, NASA will broadcast live commentary and updates, along with photos showing InSight's descent.</p><p><span></span>You can watch the landing commentary live on NASA's stream below, starting around 2 p.m. ET on Monday:</p><p>&#xa0;</p><div></div>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/pretending-live-on-mars-nasa-research-experiment-2018-1">What it's like to pretend to live on Mars for 8 months</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

You Searched For "marsquake on earth" and got 10 results

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