Otherworldly: Sounds of first 'Marsquake' detected
Otherworldly: Sounds of first 'Marsquake' detected
Doyle Rice, USA TODAY Published 4:03 p.m. ET April 23, 2019 | Updated 4:48 p.m. ET April 23, 2019
This image made available by NASA shows the planet Mars. This composite photo was created from over 100 images of Mars taken by Viking Orbiters in the 1970s. In our solar system family, Mars is Earth’s next-of-kin, the next-door relative that has captivated humans for millennia. The attraction is sure to grow on Monday, Nov. 26 with the arrival of a NASA lander named InSight. (Photo: NASA via AP)
The first "Mars quake" has been detected, NASA announced Tuesday.
The finding "officially kicks off a new field: Martian seismology!," said Bruce Banerdt of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
NASA said this is the first trembling that appears to have come from inside the planet, as opposed to being caused by forces above the surface, such as wind.
The sound was detected by NASA's Insight Lander, a robot spacecraft that's now stitting on the Martian surface. The sound was detected on April 6, 2019.
Three distinct kinds of sounds can be heard, all of them detected as ground vibrations by the spacecraft's seismometer: noise from Martian wind, the quake itself, and the spacecraft's robotic arm as it moves to take pictures.
More:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/04/23/mars-quake-first-earthquake-mars-detected-nasas-insight-lander/3552749002/
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By Meghan Bartels 4 hours ago
Scientists just felt the Red Planet move under their feet — robotically from millions of miles away, on the stark surface of Mars.
On April 6, NASA's InSight lander sensed its first confirmed marsquake, a phenomenon scientists suspected, but couldn't confirm, occurred on the neighboring planet. Measuring the Martian equivalent of earthquakes, seismic waves traveling through the interior of the planet, was among the lander's key science goals.
"We've been waiting months for our first marsquake," Philippe Lognonné, the principal investigator for the seismometer instrument, said in a statement released by the French space agency, which runs the instrument with the national research center. "It's so exciting to finally have proof that Mars is still seismically active."
NASA's Mars InSight lander snapped this photograph of its shielded seismometer on April 7,
2019.
(Image: © NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Scientists never thought marsquakes would be as frequent as their terrestrial equivalents are because Mars doesn't sport the tectonic plates whose jostling interactions prompt many quakes here on Earth. But they suspected that the stress caused by the slow cooling of the body could trigger sporadic quakes as energy rippled through the planet's interior.
More:
https://www.space.com/insight-mars-lander-first-marsquake.html?utm_source=notification
