{"id":10511,"date":"2022-05-16T19:21:30","date_gmt":"2022-05-16T11:21:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/nasa-lander-detects-biggest-marsquake-yet\/"},"modified":"2022-05-16T19:21:30","modified_gmt":"2022-05-16T11:21:30","slug":"nasa-lander-detects-biggest-marsquake-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/nasa-lander-detects-biggest-marsquake-yet\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA lander detects biggest \u2018marsquake\u2019 yet"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
The InSight lander\u2019s seismometer instrument, covered by its wind and thermal shield, on the surface of Mars. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NASA\u2019s InSight lander operating on the surface of Mars has detected the most powerful seismic tremor ever measured on another planet, a \u201cmarsquake\u201d estimated at magnitude 5, strong enough to reveal new insights about the deep Martian interior.<\/p>\n

The InSight spacecraft\u2019s seismometer instrument detected the quake May 4 from its position on a broad equatorial plain in a region known as Elysium Planitia. NASA sent $1 billion InSight mission to Mars in 2018 to collect data on the internal structure and geology of the red planet.<\/p>\n

Since landing on Mars, InSight\u2019s seismometer instrument has detected more than 1,313 quakes. But most have been relatively faint signals. Before May 4, the most powerful tremor felt by InSight was a magnitude 4.2 quake on Aug. 25, 2021, according to NASA.<\/p>\n

Scientists analyze the seismic signals registered by InSight\u2019s quake detector, developed and built by French partners, to learn about the layered structure of rock deep inside Mars. The science team can determine the composition and depth of internal layers by measuring how seismic signals pass through the planet.<\/p>\n

In early results from the InSight mission, scientists wrote in 2020 that Mars was \u201cmoderately active\u201d with seismic events, with far more quakes than instruments have detected on Earth\u2019s moon. Mars lacks the tectonic plates responsible for the strongest seismic tremors on Earth, but evidence of volcanic activity on Mars in the recent geologic past could provide clues to one origin of the quakes registered by InSight.<\/p>\n

\u201cMars trembles more often \u2013 but also more mildly \u2013 than expected,\u201d NASA said in 2020.<\/p>\n

The space agency described the May 4 tremor as a \u201cmedium-size quake\u201d compared to those felt on Earth. But the magnitude 5 quake is \u201cclose to the upper limit of what scientists hoped to see on Mars during InSight\u2019s mission,\u201d NASA said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe science team will need to study this new quake further before being able to provide details such as its location, the nature of its source, and what it might tell us about the interior of Mars,\u201d the space agency said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\"\"
This spectrogram shows the largest quake ever detected on another planet. Estimated at magnitude 5, this quake was discovered by NASA\u2019s InSight lander on May 4, 2022, the 1,222nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/ETH Zurich<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cSince we set our seismometer down in December 2018, we\u2019ve been waiting for \u2018the big one,\u2019\u201d said Bruce Banerdt, InSight\u2019s principal investigator at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads the mission. \u201cThis 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

InSight\u2019s other science instrument, a subsurface heat probe developed in Germany, failed to hammer itself into the Martian crust soon after landing.<\/p>\n

The InSight lander completed its primary mission phase at the end of 2020, after one Martian year of science observations. The mission is now in an extended phase running through the end of this year.<\/p>\n

But InSight is facing a power crunch due to dust in the Martian atmosphere, which blocks sunlight from reaching the spacecraft\u2019s polar panels. Declining power levels have forced InSight to suspend science observations and enter safe mode multiple times in recent months.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The InSight lander\u2019s seismometer instrument, covered by its wind and thermal shield, on the surface of Mars. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech NASA\u2019s InSight lander operating on the surface of Mars has detected the most powerful seismic tremor ever measured on another planet, a \u201cmarsquake\u201d estimated at magnitude 5, strong enough to reveal new insights about the deep […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10511"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}