NASA records a large earthquake that lasted almost an hour and a half on Mars

On September 18, the InSight lander of the NASA celebrated his day marciano number 1,000, or sun, measuring one of the largest and longest-lasting earthquakes the mission has ever detected.

It is estimated that the tremor was of and its shaking lasted for almost an hour and a half.

: On August 25, the mission’s seismometer detected two earthquakes of magnitude 4.2 and 4.1. For comparison, a magnitude 4.2 earthquake has five times the energy of the mission’s previous record holder, a magnitude 3.7 earthquake detected in 2019.

The mission studies seismic waves to learn more about the interior of Mars. The waves change as they travel through a planet’s crust, mantle, and core, providing scientists with a way to look deep below the surface. What they learn, including the Earth and its Moon, reports NASA.

The earthquakes may not have been detected if the mission had not taken action earlier in the year, as Mars’ highly elliptical orbit moved it further away from the Sun. Lower temperatures forced the spacecraft to rely more on its heaters to keep warm; That, in addition to the accumulation of dust on InSight’s solar panels, has reduced the power levels of the lander, which requires the mission of

The team managed to keep the seismometer on by taking a counterintuitive approach: They used InSight’s robotic arm to squeeze sand near a solar panel in the hope that as gusts of wind would carry it through the panel, the granules swept away some of the dust. The plan worked, and over the course of various dust-cleaning activities, the team found that energy levels remained fairly stable. Now that, the energy is slowly starting to build.

They occurred in different regions of Mars

While the September 18 earthquake is still being studied, scientists already know more about the August 25 earthquakes: the magnitude 4.2 event occurred 8,500 kilometers from InSight,

Scientists are working to identify the source and in which direction the seismic waves traveled, but they know that the quake occurred too far away to have originated where InSight detected nearly all of its previous large earthquakes: Cerberus Fossae, a region about 1,609 kilometers where the lava it may have flowed in the last few million years. One especially intriguing possibility is Valles Marineris, the great canyon system that leaves scars on the Martian equator. The approximate center of that canyon system is 9,700 kilometers from InSight.

To the scientists’ surprise, the magnitude 4.2 earthquake was dominated by slow, low-frequency vibrations, while fast, high-frequency vibrations characterized the magnitude 4.1 earthquake. The magnitude 4.1 earthquake was also much closer to the lander, only 925 kilometers away.

That’s good news for seismologists: recording different earthquakes from a range of distances and with different types of seismic waves provides more information about the internal structure of a planet. This summer, mission scientists used previous data from the planet’s mantle and mantle, as well as the size of its molten core.

Despite their differences, the two August earthquakes have something in common besides being big: They both occurred during the day, the windiest time and, by a seismometer, the loudest on Mars. InSight’s seismometer typically finds earthquakes at night, when the planet cools and winds are low. But like to rise above any noise caused by the wind.

Follow us on twitter: