NASA’s InSight Lander places first instrument on Mars

NASA’s InSight Lander places first instrument on Mars

News:

NASA’s InSight lander has deployed its first instrument “The seismometer” onto the surface of Mars

Facts:

• The seismometer, known as the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure, or SEIS, was made by the French space agency, CNES.
• Besides the seismometer, the other one is the heat probe, known as the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Probe (HP3).
• Experiment will allow scientists to peer into the Martian interior by studying ground motion also known as marsquakes.
• Each marsquake acts as a kind of flashbulb that illuminates the structure of the planet’s interior.
• By analyzing how seismic waves pass through the layers of the planet, scientists can deduce the depth and composition of these layers.
• The goal of the mission is to create the first three-dimensional map of Mars’ interior to better understand how rocky planets, like Mars and Earth, took shape billions of years ago.

Why Is NASA Looking for ‘Marsquakes’?

• Marsquakes, just like earthquakes, are vibrations that move through the ground. But the way these quakes form on the Red Planet may be fundamentally different from how they form on Earth. And it turns out that these differences could help scientists better understand what early Earth looked like.
• For the most part, earthquakes on our planet occur because of plate tectonics, but Mars doesn’t have a fragmented outer shell like Earth does which turns out other phenomena can also cause these seismic waves, such as the stress of a slightly shrunken surface caused by planetary cooling, the pressure of magma pushing up toward the surface or even meteorite impacts