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Record-breaking earthquake on Mars

A magnitude 5 earthquake shook the surface of Mars on May 4, the strongest recorded ever detected on a planet other than Earth.





The Insight lander works on Mars.  Photo: NASA

The Insight lander works on Mars. Image: NASA

The quake, detected by NASA’s Insight lander, surpassed the previous record of 4.2 recorded in August 2021. The InSight team has received preliminary data on the largest seismic activity ever detected on Mars, said Thomas Zurbuchen, deputy administrator of NASA’s science mission division.

On Earth, 5 magnitude earthquakes are not a big deal. Such earthquakes occur about 500,000 times a year and rarely cause serious damage, other than dropping things on shelves and cracking window panes. However, earthquakes of this size on Mars are as strong as the researchers expected when they launched the InSight station to the red planet in 2018.

“Since we set up the seismometer in December 2018, we’ve always been waiting for a big earthquake,” said Bruce Banerdt, InSight research lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. , To share. “The new record-breaking earthquake certainly provides unprecedented insights into the planet.” Researchers will need to analyze the data to determine the location and source of the earthquake.

InSight landed on Elysium Planitia, a wide plain that stretches across the equator of Mars, on November 26, 2018 and is equipped with an extremely sensitive seismometer built by the French space agency (CNES). That instrument allows experts to remotely monitor the planet’s interior by detecting and analyzing seismic waves traveling through geological layers.

Through comparisons with seismic waves on Earth, geologists can determine the depth and composition of three layers of Mars’ interior including the crust, mantle and core. A dust storm in January caused the station to go into safe mode. Just days after the quake was detected, on May 7, InSight’s power continued to drop to dangerously low levels.

An Khang (According to Space)

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