Although it is not as well known as its rover cousins, the NASA InSight Mars lander is doing important work in understanding more about the interior of Mars and how the planet is shaken by marsquakes. Two of the largest marsquakes have been identified.
The research describes how two marsquakes were detected. The first happened on August 25th, and the second on September 18th. The marsquakes that occurred on the far side of Mars were the largest detected to date, and they were also the first marsquakes to originate nearer to the landers.
The August and September earthquakes were magnitudes 4.2 and 4.1, respectively. They are five times stronger than before. The first earthquake lasted a few seconds, but the second lasted a long time and was the longest event so far. It had a wide range of frequencies, meaning its energy spread from 0.1 to 5Hz.
Anna Horleston said in a statement that S 1000a is the largest and most distant event that has ever been observed.
The first earthquake was found to originate in the canyon network. This is the first time that researchers have actually found something like this in this region. The majority of marsquakes detected to date originate in the region.
There are earthquakes on the far side of the planet in the core shadow zone. The core of the planet makes it impossible for the P and S waves to travel directly to the lander. Researchers have to look at the reflections of the waves instead of looking at the source of the earthquake.
The ability to detect marsquakes coming from this zone is a major achievement in seismology. Savas Ceylan, a co-author of the paper, said that the majority of the earthquakes were within 40 degrees of InSight.
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