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Studying the marsquakes could provide detailed information about the mantle and core of Mars. Unlike Earth, the red planet does not have tectonic plates, but volcanically active regions can cause earthquakes.
NASA’s InSight lander recently detected two strong and clear earthquakes with magnetude 3.3 and 3.1 on Mars. Its location is Cerberus Fossae, a set of steep valleys that cut through volcanic plains east of Elysium Mons.
One earthquake was more “moon-like”, while the other earthquake was more “Earth-like.” Previously, InSight had detected two earthquakes of magnitude 3.6 and 3.5 at the exact location.
InSight has recorded more than 500 earthquakes to date, but because of their clear signals, these are four of the best earthquake records for probing the interior of the planet.
Taichi Kawamura from the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris in France helped provide the InSight seismometer and distributed its data and the Swiss research university ETH Zurich. Kawamura explained, “The waves from earthquakes travel more directly through the planet, while those from lunar earthquakes tend to be very scattered; the marsquakes fall somewhere in between. Interestingly, these four largest earthquakes, which come from Cerberus Fossae, are ‘Earth-like.’
John Clinton, a seismologist who heads the InSight Earthquake Service at ETH Zurich, said: “It’s wonderful to see the marsquakes again after a long period of wind noise recording. One year after Mars, we are now much quicker to characterize seismic activity on the Red Planet. “
