InSight Archives

November 4, 2024November 4, 2024 by Matt Williams

Scientists Have Figured out why Martian Soil is so Crusty

Artist's concept of InSight "taking the pulse of Mars". Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

On November 26th, 2018, NASA’s Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport (InSight) mission landed on Mars. This was a major milestone in Mars exploration since it was the first time a research station had been deployed to the surface to probe the planet’s interior. One of the most important instruments InSight would use to do this was the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP³) developed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Also known as the Martian Mole, this instrument measured the heat flow from deep inside the planet for four years.

The HP³ was designed to dig up to five meters (~16.5 ft) into the surface to sense heat deeper in Mars’ interior. Unfortunately, the Mole struggled to burrow itself and eventually got just beneath the surface, which was a surprise to scientists. Nevertheless, the Mole gathered considerable data on the daily and seasonal fluctuations below the surface. Analysis of this data by a team from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) has yielded new insight into why Martian soil is so “crusty.” According to their findings, temperatures in the top 40 cm (~16 inches) of the Martian surface lead to the formation of salt films that harden the soil.

September 13, 2024September 13, 2024 by Evan Gough

A Gravity Map of Mars Uncovers Subsurface Mysteries

In this new gravity map of Mars, the red circles show prominent volcanoes and the black circles show impact craters with a diameter larger than a few 100 km. A gravity high signal is located in the volcanic Tharsis Region (the red area in the center right of the image), which is surrounded by a ring of negative gravity anomaly (shown in blue). Credit: Root et al.

A team of scientists presented a new gravity map of Mars at the Europlanet Science Congress 2024. The map shows the presence of dense, large-scale structures under Mars’ long-gone ocean and that mantle processes are affecting Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the Solar System.

August 13, 2024August 13, 2024 by Evan Gough

Mars Has Lots of Water, But It’s Out of Reach

A cutout of the Martian interior beneath NASA's Insight lander. The top 5 kilometers of the crust appear to be dry, but a new study provides evidence for a zone of fractured rock 11.5-20 km below the surface that is full of liquid water—more than the volume proposed to have filled hypothesized ancient Martian oceans. Credit: James Tuttle Keane and Aaron Rodriquez, courtesy of Scripps Institute of Oceanography

Mars was once wet, but now its surface is desiccated. Its meagre atmosphere contains only a tiny trace amount of water vapour. But new research says the planet contains ample liquid water. Unfortunately, it’s kilometres under the surface, well out of reach.

July 3, 2024July 3, 2024 by Evan Gough

Basketball-Sized Meteorites Strike the Surface of Mars Every Day

This is an image of the first meteoroid impact detected by NASA’s InSight mission; the image was taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter using its High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

NASA’s InSight Mars Lander faced some challenges during its time on the red planet’s surface. Its mole instrument struggled to penetrate the compacted Martian soil, and the mission eventually ended when its solar panels were covered in dust. But some of its instruments performed well, including SEIS, the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure.

SEIS gathered Mars seismic data for more than four years, and researchers working with all of that data have determined a new meteorite impact rate for Mars.

June 19, 2024June 19, 2024 by Evan Gough

Marsquakes Can Help Us Find Water on the Red Planet

The Mars InSight lander's seismic detector was used to observe seismic waves from Marsquakes and impacts. Courtesy NASA — The Mars InSight lander's seismic detector was used to observe seismic waves from Marsquakes and impacts. New research shows that the lander's seismic and magnetic data could be used to detect subsurface water on Mars. Image Credit: NASA

Earth is a seismically active planet, and scientists have figured out how to use seismic waves from Earthquakes to probe its interior. We even use artificially created seismic waves to identify underground petroleum-bearing formations. When the InSIGHT (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) lander was sent to Mars, it sensed Marsquakes to learn more bout the planet’s interior.

Researchers think they can use Marsquakes to answer one of Mars’ most pressing questions: Does the planet hold water trapped in its subsurface?

May 27, 2024May 27, 2024 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Mars InSight Has One Last Job: Getting Swallowed by Dust on the Red Planet

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE imager captured this view of dust-covered InSight lander on Mars. Courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona

Normally you don’t want dust to get into your spacecraft. That was certainly true for the InSight mission to Mars, until it died. Now, however, it’s acting as a dust collector, and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) scientists couldn’t be happier.

October 26, 2023October 26, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

Mars Still Has Liquid Rock Near its Core

An artist's depiction of the liquid silicate layer wrapped around the Martian core. Credit: IPGP-CNES.

Why doesn’t Mars have a magnetic field? If it did, the planet would be protected from cosmic radiation and charged particles emitted by our Sun. With a magnetic field, perhaps the Red Planet wouldn’t be the dry, barren world it is today.

It has long been believed that Mars once had a global magnetic field like Earth does, but somehow the iron-core dynamo that generated it must have shut down billions of years ago.

But new seismic data from NASA’s InSight lander might change our understanding of Mar’s interior, as well as alter the view of how Mars evolved and changed over time. InSight’s data revealed the presence of a molten silicate layer overlying Mars’ metallic core. Scientists say this insulating layer is like a blanket that might prevent the core from producing a global magnetic field.

October 23, 2023October 23, 2023 by Beth Johnson

“The Big One”: The Most Powerful Marsquake Ever Detected

Artist illustration of Mars Insight Lander. Credit: NASA/JPL

The ground shakes. Paintings tilt. Walls crack. Rubble may fall. On Earth, we understand how and where these events happen due to the discovery of plate tectonics – the continental crust’s creation, movement, and destruction. However, when astronauts placed seismometers on the lunar surface during NASA’s Apollo mission era, those instruments recorded quakes on the Moon. In the 1970s, the Viking landers also recorded quakes on the surface of Mars. Since neither of these worlds has plate tectonics, scientists set about collecting more data to understand the phenomena, which led to the recent NASA InSight lander. Now, a new paper in Geophysical Research Letters explains how the largest recorded seismic event on Mars provided evidence for a different sort of tectonic origin — the release of stress within the Martian crust.

May 19, 2023May 19, 2023 by Laurence Tognetti

Mars Has a Thick Crust. Its Internal Heat Mainly Comes from Radioactivity

Elevation data of Mars featuring the lower elevations of the northern lowlands primarily in blue and the much higher elevations of the southern highlands primarily in orange and red. (Credit: MOLA Science Team)

How thick is the crust of Mars? This question is what a recent study published in Geophysical Research Letters attempted to answer as it reported on data from a magnitude 4.7 marsquake recorded in May 2022 by NASA’s InSight lander, which remains the largest quake ever recorded on another planetary body. As it turns out, this data helped provide estimates of Mars’ global crustal thickness, along with a unique discovery regarding the crust in the northern and southern hemispheres, and how the interior of Mars produces its heat.

May 16, 2023May 16, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Seismic Waves Help Map the Core of Mars for the First Time

An artist’s depiction of the Martian interior and the paths taken by the seismic waves as they traveled through the planet’s core. Image courtesy of NASA/JPL and Nicholas Schmerr.

More than a hundred years after geologists first observed how seismic waves traveled through Earth, they’ve achieved another seismic first. This time, they measured “core-transiting seismic waves” moving through Mars. The InSight lander’s seismic instrument tracked shockwaves generated by an earthquake and an impact event. Their behavior revealed for the first time that Mars very likely has a liquid core. It’s made of a single blob of molten iron alloy.