NASA’s marsquake-hunting lander has detected its two largest seismic events to date — and on the far side of the planet, no less.
NASA’s InSight lander touched down on Mars in November 2018 carrying the most sensitive seismometer ever designed. Since the mission’s arrival, it has detected countless events dubbed marsquakes, using the signals to map the planet’s interior. But the two newly announced quakes were something special, according to scientists on the mission.
“Not only are they the largest and most distant events by a considerable margin, [the event dubbed] S1000a has a spectrum and duration unlike any other event previously observed,” lead author Anna Horleston, a seismologist at the University of Bristol in the U.K., said in a statement (opens in new tab) released by the Seismological Society of America, which published the new research. “They truly are remarkable events in the Martian seismic catalog.”
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