Discover Mars probe NASA’s InSight earthquake is five times larger than the earthquake Earthquake it has been registered red planet.
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The earthquake had a magnitude of 4.7, lasted more than four hours and was unlike any of the thousands of earthquakes previously detected.
It was the largest Martian earthquake previously recorded, with a magnitude of 4.2, detected in August 2021.
The Mars earthquake, called S1222a, occurred on May 4, 2022 in an unexpected region of Mars, just outside the tectonically active region of Cerberus Fossae.
The quake sent surface seismic waves around the planet’s circumference – the first time they’ve been seen on Mars.
These seismic waves revealed layers of sedimentary and volcanic rocks in the Red Planet’s crust, which could indicate a previous collision with a massive body, such as a meteor or comet.
John Clinton, co-author of the study and seismologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, said in a statement: ‘The energy released by this single earthquake is equivalent to the cumulative energy of all other Mars earthquakes we have seen so far. , even if the event was much further away.” From 1,931 kilometers (1,200 miles) away, the waves recorded in InSight were so large that they nearly filled our seismometers.”
Interestingly, “Insight” is a fixed platform on the surface of Mars, which was launched in May 2018 and landed in the Elysium Planitia region in November 2018.
The probe is equipped with a seismometer to study the crust, core and core of the red planet. The Cerberus Fossae region on the planet northeast of the rover was found to be the most tectonically active. However, S1222a occurred 37 degrees southeast of “Intuition”.
“The seismometer aboard the Insight lander recorded thousands of earthquakes, but it didn’t register any of this magnitude, and it took more than three years after touchdown to register,” said study author Carolyn Begin, professor at the Department of the Earth. , Planetary and Space Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. This earthquake has several types of waves, including two types of waves trapped near the surface.
The earthquake waves lasted about 10 hours, ten times longer than previously detected.
Only one of these two types of waves had been observed before on Mars, and more importantly, it was only after a meteor impact, not during an earthquake.
This historic discovery is likely among Insight’s latest discoveries, as dust storms gradually covered the spacecraft’s solar arrays, reducing their power to critical levels.
Scientists predict that his work shouldn’t continue much after the end of 2022.
