A meteor crashed into Mars on Christmas Eve 2021, and shook the planet so much that NASA‘s InSight lander recorded the rumblings.
Scientists didn‘t know where the quake came from until NASA‘s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a spacecraft circling the red planet, captured images of the new impact crater. NASA revealed the discovery on Thursday.
(22.07.2019)
Provided by the French space agency, Centre National d‘Études Spatiales (CNES), the seismometer detected its first marsquake on April 6, 2019. The InSight mission‘s Marsquake Service, which monitors the data from SEIS, is led by Swiss research university ETH Zurich.
(23.04.2019)
The faint seismic signal, detected by the lander‘s Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument, was recorded on April 6, the lander‘s 128th Martian day, or sol. This is the first recorded trembling that appears to have come from inside the planet, as opposed to being caused by forces above the surface, such as wind. Scientists still are examining the data to determine the exact cause of the signal.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifts off at 4:05 a.m. PDT (7:05 a.m. EDT) from Space Launch Complex 3 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California carrying NASA‘s Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, or InSight, Mars lander. InSight will be the first mission to look deep beneath the Martian surface. It will study the planet‘s interior by measuring its heat output and listen for marsquakes.
InSight, which stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, will be the first lander or rover bound for Mars since Curiosity launched in 2011. It will also be the first to dig deep into the planet’s interior in an effort to understand how the planet’s geology evolved over billions of years. The probe will scan for seismic activity, keeping tabs on the planet’s so-called “marsquakes.”