Plucky Nasa rover helps Bristol Uni team make Mars breakthrough

Scientists detected seismic waves from the other side of Mars using the InSight rover (Picture: SWNS)

For the first time, scientists have detected a marsquake travelling through Mars’s core – thanks to a Nasa rover that should have already been retired.

The team, led by the University of Bristol, also ‘heard’ a meteorite strike on the other side of the Red Planet.

Using a seismometer on Nasa’s InSight lander, scientists were able to measure sound waves from the two events, helping further their understanding of the liquid iron core at the centre of Mars.

‘We’ve effectively been listening for energy travelling through the heart of another planet, and now we’ve heard it,’ said lead author Dr Jessica Irving, senior lecturer in earth sciences at the University of Bristol. 

‘We’ve made the very first observations of seismic waves travelling through the core of Mars. Two seismic signals, one from a very distant marsquake and one from a meteorite impact on the far side of the planet, have allowed us to probe the Martian core with seismic waves. 

‘These first measurements have helped us investigate its composition. Rather than being just a ball of iron, it also contains a large amount of sulfur, as well as other elements including a small amount of hydrogen.’

The results also suggest the core is smaller than previously estimated, at between 3.560km and 3,620km across.

InSight, which provided the groundbreaking data, touched down on Mars at 7.52am GMT on November 27, 2018. Nasa said its goals were to ‘study the interior of Mars and take the planet’s vital signs, its pulse, and temperature’. 

Although InSight’s mission was initially scheduled for around one Mars year (two Earth years), the rover continued to function for twice that time before one Martian storm too many covered the spacecraft’s solar panels with dust and its batteries died.

InSight last made communication with Earth on December 15, 2022, but before that provided the invaluable data to the Bristol team and others.

‘So-called “farside” events, meaning those on the opposite side of the planet to InSight, are intrinsically harder to detect because a great deal of energy is lost or diverted away as waves travel through the planet,’ said Dr Irving.

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‘We needed both luck and skill to find, and then use, these events. We detected no farside events in the first Martian year of operations. If the mission had ended then, this research couldn’t have happened. 

“The sol 976 marsquake [on Insight’s 976th day on Mars] was the most distant event found during the mission. The second farside event, S1000a – the first event detected on day 1,000 of operations – was particularly useful because it turned out to be a meteorite impact which we heard all the way through the planet, so we knew where the seismic signals came from.

‘The extra mission time certainly paid off.’

The study, in partnership with the University of Maryland, is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the US.

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InSight survived twice as long as expected on the Red Planet.