Marsquake! NASA’s InSight Detects Two Sizable Quakes on Mars

NASA’s InSight lander used a scoop on its robotic arm to begin trickling soil over the cable connecting its seismometer to the spacecraft on March 14, 2021, the 816th Martian day, or sol of the mission. Scientists hope insulating it from the wind will make it easier to detect marsquakes. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The magnitude 3.3 and 3.1 temblors originated in a region called Cerberus Fossae, further supporting the idea that this location is seismically active.

NASA’s InSight lander has detected two strong, clear quakes originating in a location of Mars called Cerberus Fossae – the same place where two strong quakes were seen earlier in the mission. The new quakes have magnitudes of 3.3 and 3.1; the previous quakes were magnitude 3.6 and 3.5. InSight has recorded over 500 quakes to date, but because of their clear signals, these are four of the best quake records for probing the interior of the planet.

Studying marsquakes is one way the InSight science team seeks to develop a better understanding of Mars’ mantle and core. The planet doesn’t have tectonic plates like Earth, but it does have volcanically active regions that can cause rumbles. The March 7 and March 18 quakes add weight to the idea that Cerberus Fossae is a center of seismic activity.

“Over the course of the mission, we’ve seen two different types of marsquakes: one that is more ‘Moon-like’ and the other, more ‘Earth-like,’” said Taichi Kawamura of France’s Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, which helped provide InSight’s seismometer and distributes its data along with the Swiss research university ETH Zurich. Earthquake waves travel more directly through the planet, while those of moonquakes tend to be very scattered; marsquakes fall somewhere in between. “Interestingly,” Kawamura continued, “all four of these larger quakes, which come from Cerberus Fossae, are ‘Earth-like.’”

NASA Mars InSight Deploys Instruments

This illustration shows NASA’s InSight spacecraft with its instruments deployed on the Martian surface. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The new quakes have something else in common with InSight’s previous top seismic events, which occurred almost a full Martian year (two Earth years) ago: They occurred in the Martian northern summer. Scientists had predicted this would again be an ideal time to listen for quakes because winds would become calmer. The seismometer, called the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), is sensitive enough that, even while it is covered by a dome-shaped shield to block it from wind and keep it from getting too cold, wind still causes enough vibration to obscure some marsquakes. During the past northern winter season, InSight couldn’t detect any quakes at all.

“It’s wonderful to once again observe marsquakes after a long period of recording wind noise,” said John Clinton, a seismologist who leads InSight’s Marsquake Service at ETH Zurich. “One Martian year on, we are now much faster at characterizing seismic activity on the Red Planet.”

Better Detection

The winds may have quieted down, but scientists are still hoping to improve their “listening” capability even more. Temperatures near the InSight lander may swing from almost minus 148 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 100 degrees Celsius) at night to 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius) during the day. These extreme temperature variations may be causing the cable connecting the seismometer to the lander to expand and contract, resulting in popping sounds and spikes in the data.

So the mission team has begun trying to partially insulate the cable from the weather. They’ve started by using the scoop on the end of InSight’s robotic arm to drop soil on top of the domed Wind and Thermal Shield, allowing it to trickle down onto the cable. That allows the soil to get as close to the shield as possible without interfering with the shield’s seal with the ground. Burying the seismic tether is in fact one of the goals of the next phase of the mission, which NASA recently extended by two years, to December 2022.

Despite the winds that have been shaking the seismometer, InSight’s solar panels remain covered with dust, and power is running lower as Mars moves away from the Sun. Energy levels are expected to improve after July, when the planet begins to approach the Sun again. Until then, the mission will successively turn off the lander’s instruments so that InSight can hibernate, waking periodically to check its health and communicate with Earth. The team hopes to keep the seismometer on for another month or two before it has to be temporarily turned off.

More About the Mission

JPL manages InSight for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA’s Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supports spacecraft operations for the mission.

A number of European partners, including France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. InSight’s Marsquake Service is a collaborative ground service operation led by ETH Zurich that also includes on-duty seismologists from IPG Paris, University of Bristol and Imperial College London. SEIS and APSS Operations are led by CNES SISMOC, with support of CAB, and SEIS data are formatted and distributed by the IPG Paris Mars SEIS Data Service. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors.

20 Comments on "Marsquake! NASA’s InSight Detects Two Sizable Quakes on Mars"

  1. Babu G. Ranganathan | April 1, 2021 at 2:13 pm | Reply

    Babu G. Ranganathan*
    (B.A. Bible/Biology)

    POSSIBLY MILLIONS OF TONS OF VOLCANIC EARTH SOIL REACHED MARS (Newsweek)

    A Newsweek article of September 21, 1998, p.12 mentions the high possibility of Earth life on Mars because of millions of tons of Earth soil ejected into space from ancient volcanic explosions. “We think there’s about 7 million tons of earth soil sitting on Mars”, says USC scientist Kenneth Nealson. “You have to consider the possibility that if we find life on Mars, it could have come from the Earth” [Weingarten, T., Newsweek, September 21, 1998, p.12]. This may also explain why life forms may exist on Venus, again because they originated from Earth.

    In the Earth’s past there was powerful volcanic activity which could have easily spewed dirt and rocks containing microbes and life into outer space which not only could have eventually reached Mars but also ended up traveling in orbit through space that we now know as meteors, comets, and asteroids. This would mean life forms found in meteorites originated from Earth in the first place.

    Secular scientists have a different explanation from creationist scientists on the volcanic eruptions of the Earth’s past. Creation scientists believe, as Genesis teaches, that as the fountains of the deep were opened to release water for the world-wide flood the force of the eruptions could have indeed spewed great amounts of earth soil into space.

    Life could not have evolved. A partially evolved cell would quickly disintegrate under the effects of random forces of the environment, especially without the protection of a complete and fully functioning cell membrane. A partially evolved cell cannot wait millions of years for chance to make it complete and living! In fact, it couldn’t have even reached the partially evolved state.

    Having the right conditions and raw material for life do not mean that life can originate or arise by chance. Stanley Miller, in his famous experiment in 1953, showed that individual amino acids (the building blocks of life) could come into existence by chance. But, it’s not enough just to have amino acids. The various amino acids that make-up life must link together in a precise sequence, just like the letters in a sentence, to form functioning protein molecules. If they’re not in the right sequence the protein molecules won’t work. It has never been shown that various amino acids can bind together into a sequence by chance to form protein molecules. Even the simplest cell is made up of many millions of various protein molecules.

    The probability of just an average size protein molecule arising by chance is 10 to the 65th power. Mathematicians have said any event in the universe with odds of 10 to 50th power or greater is impossible! The late great British scientist Sir Frederick Hoyle calculated that the odds of even the simplest cell coming into existence by chance is 10 to the 40,000th power! How large is this? Consider that the total number of atoms in our universe is 10 to the 82nd power.

    Also, what many don’t realize is that Miller had a laboratory apparatus that shielded and protected the individual amino acids the moment they were formed, otherwise the amino acids would have quickly disintegrated and been destroyed in the mix of random energy and forces involved in Miller’s experiment.

    Miller’s experiment produced equally both left-handed and right-handed amino acids, but all living things strictly require only left-handed amino acids. If a right-handed amino acid gets into the chain the protein won’t work.

    There is no innate chemical tendency for the various amino acids to bond with one another in a sequence. Any one amino acid can just as easily bond with any other. The only reason at all for why the various amino acids bond with one another in a precise sequence in the cells of our bodies is because they’re directed to do so by an already existing sequence of molecules found in our genetic code.

    Of course, once you have a complete and living cell then the genetic code and biological machinery exist to direct the formation of more cells, but how could life or the cell have naturally originated when no directing code and mechanisms existed in nature? Read my Internet article: HOW FORENSIC SCIENCE REFUTES ATHEISM.

    Visit my newest Internet site: THE SCIENCE SUPPORTING CREATION

    Author of popular Internet article, TRADITIONAL DOCTRINE OF HELL EVOLVED FROM GREEK ROOTS

    * I have had the privilege of being recognized in the 24th edition of Marquis “Who’s Who In The East” for my writings on religion and science, and I have given successful lectures (with question and answer time afterwards) defending creation from science before evolutionist science faculty and students at various colleges and universities.

    • While we still currently don’t truly understand how life first came to be, there is no reason to jump to conclusions such as Creation. That could be one hypotheses, but as long as there is no experimental evidence to back it up, it remains just that.

    • Torbjörn Larsson | April 16, 2021 at 5:32 am | Reply

      Superstition.

  2. Clyde Spencer | April 1, 2021 at 2:24 pm | Reply

    Science used in conjunction with creationism is an oxymoron.

  3. What I want to know is where are all of the Moon rocks that should pollute our world. We should be tripping over them. And the other way around. There could be biological samples from 65 million years ago on the Moon. Why is no one talking about that?

    • Torbjörn Larsson | April 16, 2021 at 5:40 am | Reply

      There are Moon (and Mars) meteorites, and conversely the very first Earth ejecta found on the Moon [“Lunar meteorite”@Wikipedia, “Martian meteorite”@Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bertha_(lunar_sample)%5D.

      “In January 2019, research showed that a fragment (clast) embedded in Big Bertha has numerous characteristics that make it very likely to be a terrestrial (Earth) meteorite. Granite and quartz, which are commonly found on Earth but very rare to find on the Moon, were confirmed to exist in this fragment. To find the sample’s age, the research team from Curtin University looked at bits of the mineral zircon embedded in its structure. “By determining the age of zircon found in the sample, we were able to pinpoint the age of the host rock at about four billion years old, making it similar to the oldest rocks on Earth,” researcher Alexander Nemchin said, adding that “the chemistry of the zircon in this sample is very different from that of every other zircon grain ever analyzed in lunar samples, and remarkably similar to that of zircons found on Earth.” This means Big Bertha is both the first discovered terrestrial meteorite and the oldest known Earth rock.[4][5]

      If the rock is indeed terrestrial, lunar geologist David Kring said that it can give rise to valuable information about the Hadean eon. Big Bertha shows that the Earth was impacted by asteroids massive enough to produce new meteors, and granitic rocks that make up Earth’s continents were already forming. Geochemist Elizabeth Bell noted that the Moon might be a better place to look for ancient Earth rocks than Earth itself, as material erodes much slower on the Moon’s surface than it does on Earth, and Kring suggested the discovery of Big Bertha’s nature as an Earth-origin meteorite may compel other scientists to comb through Apollo lunar samples.[6]”

    • Torbjörn Larsson | April 16, 2021 at 5:44 am | Reply

      I should perhaps add that I was wishing for a lunar return to look for such samples earlier, but above all to better date the Theia impact that made the Moon. Both of those wishes were met by better analysis methods.

      But yes, now that the principle have been established it would be nice to find more samples of Earth history.

  4. If dust is covering the solar panels, have the drone fly over or hover to blow the dust away

  5. > Mathematicians have said any event in the universe with odds of 10 to 50th power or greater is impossible!

    I highly doubt that any mathematician, with more than half a brain, would *ever* say that.

    • Torbjörn Larsson | April 16, 2021 at 5:51 am | Reply

      😀 Obviously evolution doesn’t have those odds, since it happens with a likelihood of 1.

      Who knows what creationist cook up to defend the indefensible (‘gods’ do not exists, since modern cosmology tells us the universe is completely the result of a natural process). But it isn’t real, by definition, it is just their immoral habit of waving personal magic rites in the face of others.

  6. In my simple brain, wouldn’t the mere fact that these really smart scientists place odds on this make the “impossible” possible?

  7. We already know, nothing is impossible in the universe. Science tells us that this earth planet is about 4.6 billion old and the universe is 13.4 years old. Where was God and what was he doing for the first 13 billion years or so and where has he been for the last 2000 years creationist?
    I can’t help noticing a few gaps in your summation, that we are suppose to overlook? Poppycock!

  8. david c miles | April 3, 2021 at 7:51 pm | Reply

    Proove it. Closest u predict is a decade off.

  9. There’s a man walking his dog behind the rover…what did mr big shot astrologist do with the dog poop? Probably left it on Mars is my guess cuz it would make his spaceship stink

  10. You asked what was God doing for the first 13 billion years prior to the creation of the earth. I believe he was creating all of the other forms of life that are out there in our vast universe that we have yet to discover.

    • Torbjörn Larsson | April 16, 2021 at 5:54 am | Reply

      The response to another’s superstitions aside, Earth was neither created nor is 1 billion years old (if the universe was 13 billion years at the time) but 4.5 billion years old.

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