New data about the Martian crust gathered by NASA's InSight lander allowed geophysicists to estimate that the amount of groundwater could cover the entire planet to a depth of between 1 and 2 km.
Estimated to be magnitude 5, the quake is the biggest ever detected on another planet. This adds to the catalog of more than 1,313 quakes InSight has detected since landing on Mars in 2018.
The most powerful previously detected quakes occurred in the Cerberus Fossae region on Mars, where lava may have flowed in the geologically recent past.
he InSight team has found that the Martian crust is thinner then expected (20 to 37 km) and its core is liquid with radius of about 1830 km.
Since 2019, NASA's InSight's probe, called the “mole,” has been attempting to burrow into the Martian surface. Martian soil’s tendency to clump deprived the mole of the friction it needs to hammer itself to a sufficient depth.
After many months of struggle and careful adaptation, the InSight lander’s ‘Mole’ is finally into the ground. The InSight lander was sent to Mars to study the planet’s interior.
After months of perseverance, the team operating the instrument has succeeded in getting the Mole at least some distance into the ground. The Mole's job is to penetrate into the Martian soil, to a depth of 5m.
InSight is the first mission dedicated to looking deep beneath the Martian surface. Findings reveal a planet alive with quakes, dust devils and strange magnetic pulses. However, the lander's mole is still stuck and scientists are working on getting it digging again.
The signal appears to have been generated inside the planet and not by any surface-level phenomenon. Three other seismic events were detected on 14 March, 10 and 11 April, but they were much smaller and their origins more ambiguous.
Curiosity Mars rover has started drilling into a clay-bearing unit on the lower slopes of Mount Sharp, while the InSight's mole ran into a sub-surface obstacle of some sort on 28 February after hammering its way just 30 cm into Martian soil.
For the first time in history, we can hear the wind on Mars. With its InSight Lander NASA provided a version of the recording shifted up in pitch, which pulls some of the otherwise-inaudible infrasound into hearing range.
InSight spacecraft plunged into the rarefied atmosphere of Mars at a speed of more than 12,000 mph Monday and braked to a gentle touchdown, setting the stage for a two-year surface mission to probe the planet’s deep interior.
NASA’s robotic lander InSight officially started its journey to Mars following a successful predawn launch aboard an Atlas V rocket Saturday morning. The launch took place at 4:05am local time from California.
InSight is the next member of what could be called a fleet of human vehicles destined for Mars. The mission will try to understand the deeper structure of Mars.
InSight will do a deep dive into the Martian underground, putting two instruments onto the surface that will ferry information back from the depths.
