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Mars Quake May Have Caused Rolling Rocks, NASA Data Suggests
Confirmed
In Short: Images from the lander show fresh boulder tracks near the source of a possible temblor on the Red Planet, indicating that seismic activity may have set these rocks in motion.
Images from the lander show fresh boulder tracks near the source of a possible temblor on the Red Planet, indicating that seismic activity may have set these rocks in motion.
The data were collected in a dynamic landscape riddled with slopes, cracks, and rocks on the move, located in the Cerberus Fossae region, just north of Mars's equator.
Vijayan, a planetary scientist at the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad, India, noted that thousands of boulders have fallen in this area.
"The wave propagation is going to be complicated," Vijayan said, emphasizing the complexity of seismic activity on Mars.
"They're like a proxy in the absence of seismic data," he added, highlighting the importance of these boulder movements as indirect evidence of seismic activity.
The InSight mission, which includes a 'planetary stethoscope' to listen to Mars's heartbeat, has been crucial in gathering this data.
"We’re doing transformative science," Matt Wallace, deputy project manager for the Mars 2020 mission, said before its launch.
The Mars 2020 mission, which includes the Perseverance rover and the Mars Helicopter named Ingenuity, aims to explore the geology of the landing site and look for signs of past life.
"The mission objectives of our effort are to explore the geology of our landing site, to look for signs of biosignatures from the past," said Adam Steltzner, chief engineer on the Mars 2020 mission.
"We are not a life detection mission. We are looking for signs of past life on the surface of Mars, and signatures that Mars was habitable, and to the degree that is still habitable, where it might be habitable," Steltzner added.
The $2.7 billion Mars 2020 mission, launched in 2020, is set to achieve numerous firsts on the Red Planet, including the production of oxygen from carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere.
What this adds
The recent marsquake data adds to the understanding of seismic activity on Mars, providing new insights into the planet's geological processes.
What's confirmed
- Images from the lander show fresh boulder tracks near the source of a possible temblor on the Red Planet, indicating that seismic activity may have set these rocks in motion.
- The data were collected in a dynamic landscape riddled with slopes, cracks, and rocks on the move, located in the Cerberus Fossae region, just north of Mars's equator.
- Vijayan, a planetary scientist at the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad, India, noted that thousands of boulders have fallen in this area.
- "The wave propagation is going to be complicated," Vijayan said, emphasizing the complexity of seismic activity on Mars.
- "They're like a proxy in the absence of seismic data," he added, highlighting the importance of these boulder movements as indirect evidence of seismic activity.
- The InSight mission, which includes a 'planetary stethoscope' to listen to Mars's heartbeat, has been crucial in gathering this data.
- "We’re doing transformative science," Matt Wallace, deputy project manager for the Mars 2020 mission, said before its launch.
- The Mars 2020 mission, which includes the Perseverance rover and the Mars Helicopter named Ingenuity, aims to explore the geology of the landing site and look for signs of past life.
- "The mission objectives of our effort are to explore the geology of our landing site, to look for signs of biosignatures from the past," said Adam Steltzner, chief engineer on the Mars 2020 mission.
- "We are not a life detection mission. We are looking for signs of past life on the surface of Mars, and signatures that Mars was habitable, and to the degree that is still habitable, where it might be habitable," Steltzner added.
- The $2.7 billion Mars 2020 mission, launched in 2020, is set to achieve numerous firsts on the Red Planet, including the production of oxygen from carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere.
What's still developing
- NASA Mars mission suffers problem with key instrument NASA reschedules troubled Mars InSight mission to 2018 An essential round-up of science news, opinion and analysis, delivered to your inbox every weekday.
- Now there’s solid evidence marsquakes can send boulders tumbling, too.
- “The orbital parameters look dead on,” said Omar Baez, NASA’s launch director for the Mars 2020 mission.
- The high-power signal coming from the Mars 2020 spacecraft saturated the antenna’s receiver, so operators had to adjust settings at the ground station to begin deciphering telemetry information the probe was sending back to Earth shortly after launch Thursday.
- Continuing live coverage: https://t.co/B6rcMHiZuY pic.twitter.com/COSlGjCU3C A couple of hours later, NASA officials confirmed they were receiving telemetry data from Mars 2020.
- The $2.7 billion Mars 2020 billion mission is poised to achieve numerous firsts on the Red Planet, but first it had to leave Earth on top of a powerful rocket to kick off a 300-million-mile (nearly 500-million-kilometer) voyage through the solar system.
- An RL10 engine on the Centaur upper stage, fueled by an efficient mix of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants, fired two times to accelerate the Mars-bound rover to a velocity of nearly 25,000 mph (more than 11 kilometers per second).
- The Perseverance rover is the centerpiece of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, which will seek signs of ancient microbial life forms that scientists believe could have populated the Red Planet billions of years ago.
- “Really, for the first time, we’re looking for signs of life on another planet, and for the first time we’re going to collect samples that we hope will be part of the first sample return from another planet.” The Atlas 5 launcher performed flawlessly Thursday, deploying the Mars 2020 spacecraft right on its predicted course nearly one hour after liftoff.
- The rocket injected the probe into an orbit between the planets around the sun, setting the stage for a cruise to Mars that will culminate in a high-stakes, one-shot attempt to land on Red Planet on Feb.
- The quake struck just after scientists started releasing details about the previous two largest marsquakes, which occurred in 2021.
- A marsquake that includes a range of low- and high-frequency signals is called a broadband event — the seismic origins of these signals are still being studied.