Billion years, Plate tectonics, Geology, Earth science NASA's InSight made incredible discoveries on Mars!
It is the first project of its kind worldwide, in addition to sensors, for measuring wind and air pressure. The lander also has a seismometer, a heat flow probe and a magnetometer. While the team continues to work on bringing the probe to the surface of mars as intended, the highly sensitive seismometer known as a seismic experiment for the internal structure has enabled scientists to record several quakes of hundreds to thousands of kilometers. Seismic waves are influenced by the materials through which they travel and give scientists the opportunity to study the composition of the planet’s internal structure. Mars can help the team to better understand how all rocky planets, including the earth, formed in the beginning. If you like our videos, please support us with a thumbs up, subscribe to simply space and look forward to the videos that will be waiting for you in the future. What is nasa insight insight is a mission of the nasa discovery program that involves placing a single geophysical lander on mars to study its deep interior. However, insight is more than a mars mission, it’s, a terrestrial planetary researcher, who is addressing one of the most fundamental problems of planetary and solar system, science and understanding the processes that shape the rocky planets of the inner solar system, including the earth. More than 4 billion years ago, using sophisticated geophysical instruments, insight, dives, deep below the surface of mars, detecting the processes of terrestrial planet formation and measuring the planet’s, vital functions, seismology temperature and other precision tracking insight attempts to answer one of the most fundamental questions of science.
How did the terrestrial planets form deep below its surface mars is quaking? The staff behind nasa’s insight, lander, which reached the surface of mars in november 2018, has published the data. These new measurements show the complexity of the planet from its atmosphere to the deep underground here? Are some of the most fascinating discoveries of the mission below is a more detailed description of what the nasa insight lander has discovered so far on mars? Mars is quaking more frequently, but also more easily than expected. So far, more than 500 small seismic signals or quakes have been recorded by the lander. The largest quake had a strength of 4.0 large quakes. The main goal of insight is to measure martian earthquakes which may be caused by underground seismic activities or objects hitting the surface of the planet. To date, more than 30 relatively large martian earthquakes have been detected with a magnitude between three and four. These martian earthquakes occurred deeper underground than most other earthquakes. This means that, although they were by no means small, they would probably be hardly noticeable if they were to occur on the surface of the planet. Two of the quakes occurred near an area called cerberus fossee, where the fractured ground indicates volcanic activity over the last 10 million years. This seismic activity could be due to the remains of this volcanic activity. However, insight has yet to discover any of the really strong quakes. The larger quakes seem to be less frequent at this time than nasa expected small marsquakes.
The remainder of the over 250 quakes, discovered by insight were relatively small, making it more difficult to pinpoint exactly where they occurred and what had caused them. Since then, the lander has detected other small, mars quakes that were not included in this data release. These quakes are probably distributed all over the planet and have different mechanisms. At the moment, nasa has a lot of data that they have not yet been able to assign or evaluate they’re trying to understand mars and why there are so many quakes it took months after insight landed in november 2018 before they recorded the first seismic event by The end of 2019, the lander detected approximately two seismic signals per day, indicating that insight had just touched down at a particularly quiet time. The difference with earth is the tectonic plates which do not exist on mars. However, there are volcanically active regions on mars that can cause earthquakes, old floods. There created channels with a length of almost 1300 kilometers over the last 10 million years. Lava flows have seeped into these channels. Some of these young lava flows show signs of having been caused by small quakes. This is only the youngest tectonic feature on the planet. It is therefore not surprising that scientists on mars and in this area have detected seismic activity and signs of volcanic activity water. The way in which seismic waves propagate through the ground depends on its structure and hydration, so the quakes can provide information about the distribution of water on mars, the uppermost crustal layers appear to contain minerals with water.
The crust is drier than that of the earth, but much wetter than the moon. If insight finds larger martian quakes from the depths, they should tell us more about where we can find water. Strangely, strong magnetic fields billions of years ago, mars had a magnetic field. It no longer exists, but it has left ghosts behind and magnetized old rocks, which are now between 61 meters and several kilometers below the planet. Insight is equipped with a magnetometer. The first on the surface of mars. To detect magnetic signals mars does not have a constant magnetic field like the earth’s, although this was probably the case billions of years ago. Instead, it has small ranges of magnetic fields caused by rocks that have retained their magnetization over the millennia. Some of these fields have been measured from satellites, but insight has the first magnetometer ever placed on the surface of mars. There is a stable field that is about 10 times stronger than that predicted from satellite observations, which means that there are magnetized rocks at the insight landing site. These rocks are probably deep underground. Their ancient magnetization tells us something about the history of the mars depths. If they had been heated above a few hundred degrees celsius, this magnetization would have been extinguished, so they must have remained pretty cool since they were magnetized billions of years ago. The recorded rocks from the lander are not old enough to have been magnetized. So the existing magnetism is much older and has a different cause.
Insight combines the data with what it knows from seismology and geology to understand the magnetized layers under insight. How strong or deep would they have to be to detect this field? In addition, scientists are fascinated by how these signals change over time. The measurements vary according to day and night. They also tend to pulsate. Around midnight theories are still being put forward about what causes such changes, but one possibility is that they are related to the solar wind, interacting with the martian atmosphere, dust. The surface of mars is covered with more dust devils than previously thought. So far, insight has detected more than ten thousand spinning vortices that pass through its pressure sensors. Yet it has not taken a single image of a dust storm which is surprising. This may be because the eddies are simply not strong enough to transport, much dust, wind insight measures, wind speed, wind direction and air pressure almost continuously and provides more data than previous landed missions. The spacecraft’s fragment sensors have detected thousands of passing, whirlwinds, otherwise known as dust storms when they pick up sand and become visible. This site has more whirlwinds than any other place where fracture sensors have been placed on mars. Whirlwinds and dust storms are perfect for subsurface seismic exploration core, the lander itself has two radios, one sends data regularly and the other records and measures seismic activity simultaneously. This x band radio, also known as the rotation and interior structure experiment rise, can eventually provide information about the nature of the core.
The question many scientists ask themselves is whether the core is liquid or solid. A liquid core would produce more quakes and seismic signals than a solid core. These first data are only a beginning if you observe a whole mars year, this corresponds to two earth years. Scientists will get a much better idea of the magnitude and speed of the planet’s seismic activity. The insight lander mission has already paid off so far. The lander has provided nasa with valuable information on how and where the seismic activity and dust storms are occurring. However, there are still countless data that need to be evaluated. The whole mission is still on the starting blocks and at the very beginning, for the near future, science hopes that more data and evaluations will be carried out.
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