2022-12-21
Just over four years since the InSight lander arrived on Mars, the mission has ended. The lander has insufficient power to continue to operate, due to the layer of dust that has steadily accumulated on its solar panels.The InSight mission launched from Earth in the late spring of 2018 with the aim to explore the interior of the red planet. The key instrument on board was a seismometer package called SEIS, for which ETH Zurich contributed the electronics. Some months after, once fully deployed on the Martian surface, SEIS recorded the first Martian tremors.
Read more...The Swiss Seismological Service at ETH Zurich (SED) together with the group for Seismology and Geodynamics at ETH Zurich lead the Marsquake Service (MQS), a mission-level team of seismologists in charge of SEIS data analysis. Similar to what is done in a seismic service on Earth, the MQS is responsible for the review of all seismic data, identification and characterization of marsquakes and production of the seismic catalogue. The MQS is modelled on the seismic service at the SED, despite the fact that in Switzerland there are over 200 stations monitoring activity in and around the territory, whereas on Mars a single station was used to monitor the seismicity of the entire planet! Since SEIS began delivering data, MQS detected 1,318 marsquakes, including a handful of quakes caused by meteoroid impacts. These marsquake recordings allow scientists to study the planet’s crust, mantle, and core.
With the mission coming to end, the routine daily operations of the MQS come to a halt. However, the analyses of the wealth of data SEIS recorded will continue and will certainly reveal further interesting details about Mars’s interior.
Learn more about the achievements and the end of the NASA InSight mission here.