The first-ever detection of seismic waves traveling through Mars’ core provides scientists with important new information on the red planet.
The InSight lander picked up seismic waves from a marsquake and a meteor strike, both on opposite sides of the red planet. Today, their findings are published in the prestigious journal PNAS.
Planetary Cores Show Evolution
According to the data collected by the lander, Mars has a liquid iron-alloy core that also contains sulfur, oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon, albeit at much lesser levels.
The formation of rocky planets like Earth and Mars, their similarities and differences, and the conditions that allow for life on other planets can all be better understood if scientists can gain a deeper insight into the Red Planet’s innards.
Monday’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences featured research describing the findings.
The density and chemical composition of Mars’ core was estimated by analyzing the time it took seismic waves generated by one marsquake and a meteorite impact to travel through the core.
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Mars Internal Research Expedition
Unlike Earth, which has a solid inner core and a liquid outer core, Mars appears to have a single liquid core. Additionally, scientists now estimate that the core of Mars is slightly denser and smaller than previously thought, with a radius of roughly 1,106 to 1125 miles.
Even though Mars doesn’t have a magnetic field now, there are still magnetism remnants on the surface. Scientists have deduced from the clues that Mars once had the ability to host life but is now an inhospitable frozen desert.
The primary Mars internal research mission, InSight, was only expected to operate for two years. However, NASA added two more years to the mission’s original duration.
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