Scientists say NASA’s Insight probe is recording the largest earthquake on Mars ever recorded

NASA’s Mars Insight Lander The largest earthquake ever recorded on Mars.

According to new research published in the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Geophysical Research Letters, the international team said on the May 4 Earth night, the probe’s seismometer detected an earthquake that was at least five times larger than the largest earthquake ever recorded. on the red planet.

“This was definitely the largest earthquake we’ve seen,” Taichi Kawamura, lead author and planetary scientist at the Institute of Physics of the World in Paris, said in a statement.

Co-author and seismologist John Clinton, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, said the energy released from an individual quake is equivalent to the cumulative energy from all the other quakes seen so far.

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Clinton, a co-commander with Kawamura on the swamp service, said the waves recorded in InSight were so large that they nearly saturate the seismometer.

Earthquake waves last about 10 hours.

Previous swamp waves did not exceed an hour long.

The previous largest earthquake, recorded in August 2021, had a magnitude of 4.2, while it had a magnitude of 4.7 in the May earthquake.

The epicenter was abroad The most seismically active region on Mars.

This seismic event was also rare because it showed the characteristics of both high and low frequency earthquakes.

The domed seismometer on NASA’s Insight lander has measured the largest Martian earthquake.
(NASA/JPL-Caltech.)

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Data from this large earthquake was released in October by the Mars Seismic Experiment Internal Structure Data Service (SEIS), NASA’s Planetary Data System (PDS), and the Integrated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS), along with the Earthquake Service catalog.

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Mars seismology can help researchers better understand what is beneath its surface and its evolution.

It is believed that most earthquakes occur due to faulty movements.

This image shows InSight’s domed wind and heat shield covering its seismometer, called the Seismic Experiment of Internal Structure, or SEIS.
(NASA/JPL-Caltech)

It is believed that InSight is nearing its operational end because dust has gradually covered its solar panels and reduced its capacity.

“We were impressed that almost at the end of the expanded mission, we had this very cool event,” said Kawamura.

Based on Data was collected from the swamp“I would say this mission was an extraordinary success,” he continued.

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“My power is really low so this might be the last pic I can send. Don’t worry about me: My time here has been productive and uneventful. If I keep talking to my mission team, I will – but I’m getting signed here soon,” the Insight team of 25 posted to 30 people on Twitter on Monday. “Thank you for staying with me.”

Since landing in November 2018, the probe has provided insights into Mars’ liquid core and the composition of its other inner layers. I have observed hundreds of earthquakes.

Fox News’ Paul Best contributed to this report.