November 9, 2022
By Zubi
Since February 2019, Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) using the lander.
NASA's Interior Exploration is making the first measurements of tectonics on another planet.
Key to this is InSight's Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure tool (developed by geophysicists and geophysicists at ETH Zurich).
Which is listening for signs of "marsquakes" on the surface. The dataset it has gathered (over 1,300 seismic events) has largely confirmed this.
That's what planetary scientists have long suspected: that Mars is largely cool.
However, a research team led by ETH Zurich recently analyzed a group of more than 20 recent earthquakes.
Based on the location and spectral character of these events, they determined that Mars' widely distributed surface faults are not seismically active.
Nevertheless, the majority of the 20 observed seismic events originated in the vicinity of Cerberus Fossae, an area that includes fissures.
These results suggest that geological activity and volcanism still play an active role in shaping the surface of Mars.
The research was led by a senior scientist in the Seismology and Geodynamics group at ETH Zurich's Institute of Geophysics.