ExtremeTech
NASA’s InSight Lander Detects Major Marsquakes By Ryan Whitwam on April 5, 2021 at 7:14 am
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Mars is shaking, and we’d never know were it not for the trailblazing InSight lander. This mission touched down on the red planet in 2018, making history by deploying the first and only seismometer on another planet. NASA has been listening for rumbles ever since, and it just heard some big ones.
NASA reports that InSight detected two strong quakes, originating in a region with enormous surface fissures called Cerberus Fossae. The quakes had magnitudes of 3.3 and 3.1, similar to a pair of previous quakes from the same area of the planet that clocked in at 3.6 and 3.5. InSight has recorded hundreds of seismic events on Mars with its Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) package, but these are the most significant.