NASA’s Mars InSight lander had two big reasons to celebrate on Sept. 18. It marked the lander’s 1,000th Martian day (called a „sol“) …
NASA’s Mars InSight lander had two big reasons to celebrate on Sept.18. It marked the lander’s 1,000th Martian day (called a „sol“) on the red planet, and it’s also the day it detected a fantastic nearly 1.5-hour-long marsquake estimated to hit a magnitude of 4.2. Talk about shaking things up. It’s been quite a run of marsquakes for InSight lately. It also picked up quakes of magnitudes 4.1 and 4.2 on Aug.25. All three of these recent shakers beat out the lander’s previous record holder for magnitude, a 3.7 picked up in 2019. As NASA JPL pointed out in a statement on Wednesday, a 4.2 quake has five times the energy of a 3.7. Marsquakes tell a story. „The waves change as they travel through a planet’s crust, mantle, and core, providing scientists a way to peer deep below the surface,“ NASA said.
