NASA InSight mission reveals Mars experiences 'Marsquakes'

Other planets, they're just like us!

It turns out Mars, Earth's red neighbor, also has earthquakes — er — marsquakes.

Thanks to NASA's InSight lander, scientists have confirmed that Mars is a seismically active planet, said Bruce Banerdt, the principal investigator of the mission, findings from which were published Monday in Nature Geoscience and Nature Communications.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The InSight mission landed on Mars in November 2018, to study the crust, mantle, and core, and to measure tectonic activity and meteorite impacts, in the planet's "first thorough checkup since it formed 4.5 billion years ago," per NASA.

So far, the mission has recorded 174 different seismic events in 235 Martian days. "The seismic activity is greater than that of the Moon, which was measured back during the Apollo Program, but less than Earth," Banerdt said in a teleconference, per Vice News.

"Knowledge of the level of seismic activity is crucial for investigating the interior structure and understanding Mars's thermal and chemical evolution," according to the findings.

The mission is set to last for at least an entire Martian year (687 Earth days). Read more about the latest on Mars at Vice News.