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NASA says its InSight lander has detected over 450 'marsquakes'
Marsquakes are more common but less intense than NASA thought. That's one of the things the agency has revealed in the six papers it recently published on InSight's findings since it landed on the red planet. Apparently, InSight's Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure instrument (SEIS) recorded over 450 seismic signals or "trembling" events since last year. Now, the agency has announced that "the vast majority" of them were probably marsquakes and not merely noise created by environmental factors like the wind.
NASA shares the odd sounds from its Mars seismometer
NASA's InSight lander is providing a veritable soundtrack for Mars. The agency has posted a handful of recordings from the SEIS (Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure) that give a feel for Mars' activity. Two of them are "representative" marsquakes, and might be good for testing the bass response of your headphones or speakers -- they're low, steady rumbles. They suggest that Mars' crust is a blend between Earth's and the Moon's, with seismic events lasting longer than on the Earth (about a minute) but much shorter than its lunar neighbor.
NASA's InSight lander may have recorded a marsquake
It might not have taken long for NASA's InSight lander to capture a marsquake. The machine's seismometer recorded trembling on April 6th that seems to have come from within Mars, rather than an above-ground source like the wind or InSight itself. Although the event was too quiet to say much about Mars' insides (it would have been difficult to detect on Earth), it suggested that Mars is, in fact seismically active. There were other events on March 14th, April 10th and April 11th, although they were faint enough as to have been ambiguous.
