NASA InSight Mars Lander

Mars’s core has been measured — and it’s surprisingly large
Mars becomes the first inner planet after Earth to have the size of its core estimated with seismology.

www.nature.com

Mars’s core has been measured — and it’s surprisingly large

Mars becomes the first inner planet after Earth to have the size of its core estimated with seismology.
www.nature.com www.nature.com
 
Grey Havoc said:
futurism.com

NASA Takes Emergency Action to Save Dying Mars Lander

"We would be hopeful that we'd be able to bring it back to life, especially if it's not asleep or dead for a long period of time. But that would be a dicey situation."
futurism.com futurism.com
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It is not looking good with the Mars InSight lander, with all the trouble with the Mole and now this issue with not being able to collect enough power due to the solar panels being caked in so much dust that it may put the whole mission in jeopardy. It would be sad to lose InSight due to the dust issue.
 
Grey Havoc said:
www.marsdaily.com

Insight Mars Lander may die this year due to dust

Moscow (Sputnik) Jun 29, 2021 - The robotic vehicle has been roaming the Martian surface since 2018. Manufactured by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, InSight's main aim is to measure the planet's seismic activity as well as to provi
www.marsdaily.com
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Not good news at all about the InSight dust issue threatening the landers life. NASA should have equipped the lander with an RTG, I wonder what stopped NASA from putting an RTG onto InSight.
 
mars.nasa.gov

NASA's InSight Finds Three Big Marsquakes, Thanks to Solar-Panel Dusting – NASA Mars Exploration

The lander cleared enough dust from one solar panel to keep its seismometer on through the summer, allowing scientists to study the three biggest quakes they’ve seen on Mars.
mars.nasa.gov mars.nasa.gov

NEWS | September 22, 2021
NASA's InSight Finds Three Big Marsquakes, Thanks to Solar-Panel Dusting

The lander cleared enough dust from one solar panel to keep its seismometer on through the summer, allowing scientists to study the three biggest quakes they’ve seen on Mars.

On Sept. 18, NASA’s InSight lander celebrated its 1,000th Martian day, or sol, by measuring one of the biggest, longest-lasting marsquakes the mission has ever detected. The temblor is estimated to be about a magnitude 4.2 and shook for nearly an hour-and-a-half.

This is the third major quake InSight has detected in a month: On Aug. 25, the mission’s seismometer detected two quakes of magnitudes 4.2 and 4.1. For comparison, a magnitude 4.2 quake has five times the energy of the mission’s previous record holder, a magnitude 3.7 quake detected in 2019.

The mission studies seismic waves to learn more about Mars’ interior. The waves change as they travel through a planet’s crust, mantle, and core, providing scientists a way to peer deep below the surface. What they learn can shed light on how all rocky worlds form, including Earth and its Moon.

The quakes might not have been detected at all had the mission not taken action earlier in the year, as Mars’ highly elliptical orbit took it farther from the Sun. Lower temperatures required the spacecraft to rely more on its heaters to keep warm; that, plus dust buildup on InSight’s solar panels, has reduced the lander’s power levels, requiring the mission to conserve energy by temporarily turning off certain instruments.

The team managed to keep the seismometer on by taking a counterintuitive approach: They used InSight’s robotic arm to trickle sand near one solar panel in the hopes that, as wind gusts carried it across the panel, the granules would sweep off some of the dust. The plan worked, and over several dust-clearing activities, the team saw power levels remain fairly steady. Now that Mars is approaching the Sun once again, power is starting to inch back up.

“If we hadn’t acted quickly earlier this year, we might have missed out on some great science,” said InSight’s principal investigator, Bruce Banerdt of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads the mission. “Even after more than two years, Mars seems to have given us something new with these two quakes, which have unique characteristics.”

Temblor Insights

While the Sept. 18 quake is still being studied, scientists already know more about the Aug. 25 quakes: The magnitude 4.2 event occurred about 5,280 miles (8,500 kilometers) from InSight – the most distant temblor the lander has detected so far.

Scientists are working to pinpoint the source and which direction the seismic waves traveled, but they know the shaking occurred too far to have originated where InSight has detected almost all of its previous large quakes: Cerberus Fossae, a region roughly 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) away where lava may have flowed within the last few million years. One especially intriguing possibility is Valles Marineris, the epically long canyon system that scars the Martian equator. The approximate center of that canyon system is 6,027 miles (9,700 kilometers) from InSight.

To the surprise of scientists, the Aug. 25 quakes were two different types, as well. The magnitude 4.2 quake was dominated by slow, low-frequency vibrations, while fast, high-frequency vibrations characterized the magnitude 4.1 quake. The magnitude 4.1 quake was also much closer to the lander – only about 575 miles (925 kilometers) away.

That’s good news for seismologists: Recording different quakes from a range of distances and with different kinds of seismic waves provides more information about a planet’s inner structure. This summer, the mission’s scientists used previous marsquake data to detail the depth and thickness of the planet’s crust and mantle, plus the size of its molten core.

Despite their differences, the two August quakes do have something in common other than being big: Both occurred during the day, the windiest – and, to a seismometer, noisiest – time on Mars. InSight’s seismometer usually finds marsquakes at night, when the planet cools off and winds are low. But the signals from these quakes were large enough to rise above any noise caused by wind.

Looking ahead, the mission’s team is considering whether to perform more dust cleanings after Mars solar conjunction, when Earth and Mars are on opposite sides of the Sun. Because the Sun’s radiation can affect radio signals, interfering with communications, the team will stop issuing commands to the lander on Sept. 29, though the seismometer will continue to listen for quakes throughout conjunction.
Click to expand...
 
Flyaway said:
mars.nasa.gov

NASA's InSight Finds Three Big Marsquakes, Thanks to Solar-Panel Dusting – NASA Mars Exploration

The lander cleared enough dust from one solar panel to keep its seismometer on through the summer, allowing scientists to study the three biggest quakes they’ve seen on Mars.
mars.nasa.gov mars.nasa.gov

NEWS | September 22, 2021
NASA's InSight Finds Three Big Marsquakes, Thanks to Solar-Panel Dusting

The lander cleared enough dust from one solar panel to keep its seismometer on through the summer, allowing scientists to study the three biggest quakes they’ve seen on Mars.

On Sept. 18, NASA’s InSight lander celebrated its 1,000th Martian day, or sol, by measuring one of the biggest, longest-lasting marsquakes the mission has ever detected. The temblor is estimated to be about a magnitude 4.2 and shook for nearly an hour-and-a-half.

This is the third major quake InSight has detected in a month: On Aug. 25, the mission’s seismometer detected two quakes of magnitudes 4.2 and 4.1. For comparison, a magnitude 4.2 quake has five times the energy of the mission’s previous record holder, a magnitude 3.7 quake detected in 2019.

The mission studies seismic waves to learn more about Mars’ interior. The waves change as they travel through a planet’s crust, mantle, and core, providing scientists a way to peer deep below the surface. What they learn can shed light on how all rocky worlds form, including Earth and its Moon.

The quakes might not have been detected at all had the mission not taken action earlier in the year, as Mars’ highly elliptical orbit took it farther from the Sun. Lower temperatures required the spacecraft to rely more on its heaters to keep warm; that, plus dust buildup on InSight’s solar panels, has reduced the lander’s power levels, requiring the mission to conserve energy by temporarily turning off certain instruments.

The team managed to keep the seismometer on by taking a counterintuitive approach: They used InSight’s robotic arm to trickle sand near one solar panel in the hopes that, as wind gusts carried it across the panel, the granules would sweep off some of the dust. The plan worked, and over several dust-clearing activities, the team saw power levels remain fairly steady. Now that Mars is approaching the Sun once again, power is starting to inch back up.

“If we hadn’t acted quickly earlier this year, we might have missed out on some great science,” said InSight’s principal investigator, Bruce Banerdt of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads the mission. “Even after more than two years, Mars seems to have given us something new with these two quakes, which have unique characteristics.”

Temblor Insights

While the Sept. 18 quake is still being studied, scientists already know more about the Aug. 25 quakes: The magnitude 4.2 event occurred about 5,280 miles (8,500 kilometers) from InSight – the most distant temblor the lander has detected so far.

Scientists are working to pinpoint the source and which direction the seismic waves traveled, but they know the shaking occurred too far to have originated where InSight has detected almost all of its previous large quakes: Cerberus Fossae, a region roughly 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) away where lava may have flowed within the last few million years. One especially intriguing possibility is Valles Marineris, the epically long canyon system that scars the Martian equator. The approximate center of that canyon system is 6,027 miles (9,700 kilometers) from InSight.

To the surprise of scientists, the Aug. 25 quakes were two different types, as well. The magnitude 4.2 quake was dominated by slow, low-frequency vibrations, while fast, high-frequency vibrations characterized the magnitude 4.1 quake. The magnitude 4.1 quake was also much closer to the lander – only about 575 miles (925 kilometers) away.

That’s good news for seismologists: Recording different quakes from a range of distances and with different kinds of seismic waves provides more information about a planet’s inner structure. This summer, the mission’s scientists used previous marsquake data to detail the depth and thickness of the planet’s crust and mantle, plus the size of its molten core.

Despite their differences, the two August quakes do have something in common other than being big: Both occurred during the day, the windiest – and, to a seismometer, noisiest – time on Mars. InSight’s seismometer usually finds marsquakes at night, when the planet cools off and winds are low. But the signals from these quakes were large enough to rise above any noise caused by wind.

Looking ahead, the mission’s team is considering whether to perform more dust cleanings after Mars solar conjunction, when Earth and Mars are on opposite sides of the Sun. Because the Sun’s radiation can affect radio signals, interfering with communications, the team will stop issuing commands to the lander on Sept. 29, though the seismometer will continue to listen for quakes throughout conjunction.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

Mars keeps on surprising us, especially with not one but three Mag 4.2 Mars-quakes. And it is good news that InSight celebrated its thousand day on Mars since landing, here's to the next thousand.
 

NASA’s InSight Records Monster Quake on Mars​

Estimated to be magnitude 5, the quake is the biggest ever detected on another planet.
NASA’s InSight Mars lander has detected the largest quake ever observed on another planet: an estimated magnitude 5 temblor that occurred on May 4, 2022, the 1,222nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission. This adds to the catalog of more than 1,313 quakes InSight has detected since landing on Mars in November 2018. The largest previously recorded quake was an estimated magnitude 4.2detected Aug. 25, 2021.
InSight was sent to Mars with a highly sensitive seismometer, provided by France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), to study the deep interior of the planet. As seismic waves pass through or reflect off material in Mars’ crust, mantle, and core, they change in ways that seismologists can study to determine the depth and composition of these layers. What scientists learn about the structure of Mars can help them better understand the formation of all rocky worlds, including Earth and its Moon.
A magnitude 5 quake is a medium-size quake compared to those felt on Earth, but it’s close to the upper limit of what scientists hoped to see on Mars during InSight’s mission. The science team will need to study this new quake further before being able to provide details such as its location, the nature of its source, and what it might tell us about the interior of Mars.

“Since we set our seismometer down in December 2018, we’ve been waiting for ‘the big one,’” said Bruce Banerdt, InSight’s principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads the mission. “This quake is sure to provide a view into the planet like no other. Scientists will be analyzing this data to learn new things about Mars for years to come.”

The large quake comes as InSight is facing new challenges with its solar panels, which power the mission. As InSight’s location on Mars enters winter, there’s more dust in the air, reducing available sunlight. On May 7, 2022, the lander’s available energy fell just below the limit that triggers safe mode, where the spacecraft suspends all but the most essential functions. This reaction is designed to protect the lander and may occur again as available power slowly decreases.

After the lander completed its prime mission at the end of 2020, meeting its original science goals, NASA extended the mission through December 2022.

www.jpl.nasa.gov

NASA’s InSight Records Monster Quake on Mars

Estimated to be magnitude 5, the quake is the biggest ever detected on another planet.
www.jpl.nasa.gov www.jpl.nasa.gov
 
Flyaway said:

NASA’s InSight Records Monster Quake on Mars​

Estimated to be magnitude 5, the quake is the biggest ever detected on another planet.
NASA’s InSight Mars lander has detected the largest quake ever observed on another planet: an estimated magnitude 5 temblor that occurred on May 4, 2022, the 1,222nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission. This adds to the catalog of more than 1,313 quakes InSight has detected since landing on Mars in November 2018. The largest previously recorded quake was an estimated magnitude 4.2detected Aug. 25, 2021.
InSight was sent to Mars with a highly sensitive seismometer, provided by France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), to study the deep interior of the planet. As seismic waves pass through or reflect off material in Mars’ crust, mantle, and core, they change in ways that seismologists can study to determine the depth and composition of these layers. What scientists learn about the structure of Mars can help them better understand the formation of all rocky worlds, including Earth and its Moon.
A magnitude 5 quake is a medium-size quake compared to those felt on Earth, but it’s close to the upper limit of what scientists hoped to see on Mars during InSight’s mission. The science team will need to study this new quake further before being able to provide details such as its location, the nature of its source, and what it might tell us about the interior of Mars.

“Since we set our seismometer down in December 2018, we’ve been waiting for ‘the big one,’” said Bruce Banerdt, InSight’s principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads the mission. “This quake is sure to provide a view into the planet like no other. Scientists will be analyzing this data to learn new things about Mars for years to come.”

The large quake comes as InSight is facing new challenges with its solar panels, which power the mission. As InSight’s location on Mars enters winter, there’s more dust in the air, reducing available sunlight. On May 7, 2022, the lander’s available energy fell just below the limit that triggers safe mode, where the spacecraft suspends all but the most essential functions. This reaction is designed to protect the lander and may occur again as available power slowly decreases.

After the lander completed its prime mission at the end of 2020, meeting its original science goals, NASA extended the mission through December 2022.

www.jpl.nasa.gov

NASA’s InSight Records Monster Quake on Mars

Estimated to be magnitude 5, the quake is the biggest ever detected on another planet.
www.jpl.nasa.gov www.jpl.nasa.gov
Click to expand...

Well done InSight for discovering the largest earthquake on Mars, a magnitude 5 no less. And InSight now NASA now has given InSight a mission extension through December and hopefully into next year if it can last longer past the dust storms.
 
FighterJock said:
Not good news at all about the InSight dust issue threatening the landers life. NASA should have equipped the lander with an RTG, I wonder what stopped NASA from putting an RTG onto InSight.
Click to expand...

Cost (~$100M) and availability. RTG production is very limited.
 
Hobbes said:
FighterJock said:
Not good news at all about the InSight dust issue threatening the landers life. NASA should have equipped the lander with an RTG, I wonder what stopped NASA from putting an RTG onto InSight.
Click to expand...

Cost (~$100M) and availability. RTG production is very limited.
Click to expand...

I can see your point now Hobbes, RTGs are very, very expensive, and the fact that both Mars rovers had to be fitted with RTGs.
 
Hobbes said:
FighterJock said:
Not good news at all about the InSight dust issue threatening the landers life. NASA should have equipped the lander with an RTG, I wonder what stopped NASA from putting an RTG onto InSight.
Click to expand...

Cost (~$100M) and availability. RTG production is very limited.
Click to expand...
They have started producing new material I now, but it’s a slow process I believe.
 
It's really sad
They should have equip the lander with a brush, so the robot arm could dust off the Solar Panels
 
Michel Van said:
It's really sad
They should have equip the lander with a brush, so the robot arm could dust off the Solar Panels
Click to expand...


Hobbes said:
FighterJock said:
Not good news at all about the InSight dust issue threatening the landers life. NASA should have equipped the lander with an RTG, I wonder what stopped NASA from putting an RTG onto InSight.
Click to expand...

Cost (~$100M) and availability. RTG production is very limited.
Click to expand...

I had suggested in an earlier post above that NASA should have fitted InSight with an RTG but Hobbs replied that it would cost $100 million US dollars to produce and that production was limited. I wish that a Martian dust devil would come by near where InSight landed and suck all the dust of the solar panels and give it a new lease of life.
 
Michel Van said:
It's really sad
They should have equip the lander with a brush, so the robot arm could dust off the Solar Panels
Click to expand...

I'm sure I read somewhere that the Martian dust that accumulates on these solar panels is attracted electrostatically ( because the atmosphere is so dry, and non-conductive ), rather than just falling out of the sky . . .

cheers,
Robin.
 
www.jpl.nasa.gov

NASA’s InSight ‘Hears’ Its First Meteoroid Impacts on Mars

The Mars lander’s seismometer has picked up vibrations from four separate impacts in the past two years.
www.jpl.nasa.gov www.jpl.nasa.gov

www.reuters.com

NASA's InSight lander detects space rocks as they slam into Mars

Mars, by virtue of its tenuous atmosphere and proximity to our solar system's asteroid belt, is far more vulnerable than Earth to being struck by space rocks - one of the many differences between the two planetary neighbors.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com

phys.org

NASA's InSight hears its first meteoroid impacts on Mars

NASA's InSight Mars lander has detected seismic waves from four space rocks that crashed on Mars in 2020 and 2021.
phys.org phys.org
 
www.jpl.nasa.gov

NASA’s InSight Lander Detects Stunning Meteoroid Impact on Mars

The agency’s lander felt the ground shake during the impact while cameras aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted the yawning new crater from space.
www.jpl.nasa.gov www.jpl.nasa.gov

NASA’s InSight Lander Detects Stunning Meteoroid Impact on Mars
Oct. 27, 2022

The agency’s lander felt the ground shake during the impact while cameras aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted the yawning new crater from space.

NASA’s InSight lander recorded a magnitude 4 marsquake last Dec. 24, but scientists learned only later the cause of that quake: a meteoroid strike estimated to be one of the biggest seen on Mars since NASA began exploring the cosmos. What’s more, the meteoroid excavated boulder-size chunks of ice buried closer to the Martian equator than ever found before – a discovery with implications for NASA’s future plans to send astronauts to the Red Planet.

Scientists determined the quake resulted from a meteoroid impact when they looked at before-and-after images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and spotted a new, yawning crater. Offering a rare opportunity to see how a large impact shook the ground on Mars, the event and its effects are detailed in two papers published Thursday, Oct. 27, in the journal Science.

The meteoroid is estimated to have spanned 16 to 39 feet (5 to 12 meters) – small enough that it would have burned up in Earth’s atmosphere, but not in Mars’ thin atmosphere, which is just 1% as dense as our planet’s. The impact, in a region called Amazonis Planitia, blasted a crater roughly 492 feet (150 meters) across and 70 feet (21 meters) deep. Some of the ejecta thrown by the impact flew as far as 23 miles (37 kilometers) away.

With images and seismic data documenting the event, this is believed to be one of the largest craters ever witnessed forming any place in the solar system. Many larger craters exist on the Red Planet, but they are significantly older and predate any Mars mission.

View: https://youtu.be/17hsIedHKx8


This video includes a seismogram and sonification of the signals recorded by NASA’s InSight Mars lander, which detected a giant meteoroid strike on Dec. 24, 2021, the 1,094th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CNES/Imperial College London

“It’s unprecedented to find a fresh impact of this size,” said Ingrid Daubar of Brown University, who leads InSight’s Impact Science Working Group. “It’s an exciting moment in geologic history, and we got to witness it.”

InSight has seen its power drastically decline in recent months due to dust settling on its solar panels. The spacecraft now is expected to shut down within the next six weeks, bringing the mission’s science to an end.

InSight is studying the planet’s crust, mantle, and core. Seismic waves are key to the mission and have revealed the size, depth, and composition of Mars’ inner layers. Since landing in November 2018, InSight has detected 1,318 marsquakes, including several caused by smaller meteoroid impacts.

But the quake resulting from last December’s impact was the first observed to have surface waves – a kind of seismic wave that ripples along the top of a planet’s crust. The second of the two Science papers related to the big impact describes how scientists use these waves to study the structure of Mars’ crust.

Crater Hunters

In late 2021, InSight scientists reported to the rest of the team they had detected a major marsquake on Dec. 24. The crater was first spotted on Feb. 11, 2022, by scientists working at Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS), which built and operates two cameras aboard MRO. The Context Camera (CTX) provides black-and-white, medium-resolution images, while the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) produces daily maps of the entire planet, allowing scientists to track large-scale weather changes like the recent regional dust storm that further diminished InSight’s solar power.

The impact’s blast zone was visible in MARCI data that allowed the team to pin down a 24-hour period within which the impact occurred. These observations correlated with the seismic epicenter, conclusively demonstrating that a meteoroid impact caused the large Dec. 24 marsquake.

“The image of the impact was unlike any I had seen before, with the massive crater, the exposed ice, and the dramatic blast zone preserved in the Martian dust,” said Liliya Posiolova, who leads the Orbital Science and Operations Group at MSSS. “I couldn’t help but imagine what it must have been like to witness the impact, the atmospheric blast, and debris ejected miles downrange.”

View: https://youtu.be/NR7QCUit-do


This animation depicts a flyover of a meteoroid impact crater on Mars that’s surrounded by boulder-size chunks of ice. The animation was created using data from the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Establishing the rate at which craters appear on Mars is critical for refining the planet’s geologic timeline. On older surfaces, such as those of Mars and our Moon, there are more craters than on Earth; on our planet, the processes of erosion and plate tectonics erase older features from the surface.

New craters also expose materials below the surface. In this case, large chunks of ice scattered by the impact were viewed by MRO’s High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) color camera.

Subsurface ice will be a vital resource for astronauts, who could use it for a variety of needs, including drinking water, agriculture, and rocket propellant. Buried ice has never been spotted this close to the Martian equator, which, as the warmest part of Mars, is an appealing location for astronauts.

More About the Missions

JPL manages InSight and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA’s Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, InSight spacecraft (including its cruise stage and lander), and supports spacecraft operations for both missions.

Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego built and operates the Context Camera and MARCI camera. University of Arizona built and operates the HiRISE camera.

A number of European partners, including France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors, and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) supplied a passive laser retroreflector.
Click to expand...
 
Mars might be, geologically speaking, not quite dead.

Researchers have analyzed a slew of recent temblors on the Red Planet and shown that these Marsquakes are probably caused by magma moving deep under the Martian surface. That’s evidence that Mars is still volcanically active, the researchers report October 27 in Nature Astronomy.

Since touching down on Mars four years ago, NASA’s InSight lander has detected more than 1,000 Marsquakes (SN: 11/26/18). Its seismometer records seismic waves, which reveal information about a temblor’s size and location.
Click to expand...

www.sciencenews.org

Marsquakes hint that the planet might be volcanically active after all

Seismic data recorded by NASA’s InSight lander suggest molten rock moves tens of kilometers below the planet’s fractured Cerberus Fossae region.
www.sciencenews.org www.sciencenews.org
 
New paper published today from InSight data shows that Mars may still be more active than previously suspected.

Geophysical evidence for an active mantle plume underneath Elysium Planitia on Mars

Abstract
Although the majority of volcanic and tectonic activity on Mars occurred during the first 1.5 billion years of its geologic history, recent volcanism, tectonism and active seismicity in Elysium Planitia reveal ongoing activity. However, this recent pulse in volcanism and tectonics is unexpected on a cooling Mars. Here we present observational evidence and geophysical models demonstrating that Elysium Planitia is underlain by an ~4,000-km-diameter active mantle plume head. Plume activity provides an explanation for the regional gravity and topography highs, recent volcanism, transition from compressional to extensional tectonics and ongoing seismicity. The inferred plume head characteristics are comparable to terrestrial plumes that are linked to the formation of large igneous provinces. Our results demonstrate that the interior of Mars is geodynamically active today, and imply that volcanism has been driven by mantle plumes from the formation of the Hesperian volcanic provinces and Tharsis in the past to Elysium Planitia today.

www.nature.com

Geophysical evidence for an active mantle plume underneath Elysium Planitia on Mars - Nature Astronomy

An ~4,000-km-diameter and 200–500-km-thick active mantle plume is present below Elysium Planitia on Mars, indicating that the Martian interior is geodynamically active and drives the volcanic and seismic activity of the region. Studies from the InSight lander need to consider the presence of...
www.nature.com www.nature.com
 
Grey Havoc said:
science.slashdot.org

Mars May Have Active Volcanoes, Adding New Promise To Search for Extraterrestrial Life - Slashdot

One of the great differences between Mars and Earth involves what's going on beneath the surface. Our planet remains a tectonically and volcanically active world -- witness the current eruptions in Hawaii -- while Mars has been a cold, geologically dead place for the past three billion years...
science.slashdot.org
Click to expand...

An interesting development from InSight, I had always wondered whether the Martian volcanos were still active or not. Now we have proof that they are.
 
Insight R.I.P.?

On Dec. 18, 2022, NASA’s InSight did not respond to communications from Earth. The lander’s power has been declining for months, as expected, and it’s assumed InSight may have reached its end of operations. It’s unknown what prompted the change in its energy; the last time the mission contacted the spacecraft was on Dec. 15, 2022.

The mission will continue to try and contact InSight.
Click to expand...

NASA InSight – Dec. 19, 2022 – Mars InSight

blogs.nasa.gov blogs.nasa.gov
 

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