At magnitude 5, it was the largest quake ever detected on another planet.
He said each “Mars quake” yields valuable clues about what’s going on inside the planet and how it formed billions of years ago.
“As the seismic waves move through the planet, they're reflected off of boundaries, like light reflected off a mirror,” Bannerdt said. “So every time we have a quake, it’s like a little flashbulb going off.”Recent dust storms caked its solar panels with debris, forcing it to go into low energy mode, so it will only be able to transmit data for a few more months before the mission goes dark.The InSight’s domed wind and thermal shield, which covers its seismometer.
Obviously, Earth and Mars are very different places, and InSight’s seismological findings drive that point home. For starters, scientists are fairly certain that Mars doesn’t have the same kind of tectonic plates like here on Earth.Instead, most seismic activity on Mars comes from what’s called “vertical tectonics,” like uplift from underground volcanic activity and other stresses coming from its interior.
“We think the level of seismic activity is pretty much what you might see on the Earth,” he said. “If you took away all the plate boundaries and the quakes associated with plate boundaries, and then you put that onto a smaller planet.”
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