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Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Artist's concept of NASA's InSight lander on Mars.
Due for a May launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California , NASA says the InSight (Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) lander should detect marsquakes; map Mars’ deep interior, and finally help us understand how Mars’ massive volcanoes actually formed.
InSight should also help planetary scientists understand why Mars never sustained plate tectonics.
Plate tectonics, the process by which a rocky planet recycles its global atmosphere, is arguably key to the evolution of intelligent life as we know it. On Earth, our crust is divided into seven lithospheric plates which float atop our planet’s mantle. It’s this motion of the plates and their subsequent boundary interactions that cause much of Earth’s volcanic and seismic activity and the kind of global atmospheric and surface recycling on which life depends.
Because water appears to be the key to maintaining global tectonics, like Venus, when Mars lost most of its water, maybe it also lost its plate tectonics. That is, if it ever had any.
InSight will definitely help understand why Mars did not develop sustained plate tectonics, Bruce Banerdt, the Principal Investigator for NASA’s InSight Mission to Mars, told me. But he notes that it’s still an open question whether there may have been plate tectonics within the first 100 million years of its history. Banerdt says by mapping the thickness and global structure of the crust, along with a measurement of the current heat flow, the mission will provide important constraints on geophysical thermal history models used to understand the evolutionary path that a planet can take.
As for when and if Mars was ever habitable?
“Our data is useful but more indirect,” said Banerdt.
But by understanding the history of volcanism and tectonics, Banerdt says we will have a better handle on the supply of water, carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere.
Banerdt also hopes insight will help us understand why Mars does not have a global magnetic field.
Although Mars does not have a magnetic field today, Banerdt says researchers are pretty certain that it had one in the past. Whether the core can generate a magnetic field, he says, depends on the details of its temperature, composition, and size, as well as the ability of the mantle to transfer heat to the surface.
InSight will enable all this via three instruments.
The first is a seismometer to measure marsquakes, which hasn’t been attempted since NASA’s 1970s-era Viking landers. But unlike the Viking mission, which had their seismometers mounted on top their spacecraft, NASA says that InSight’s round, dome-shaped seismometer will be placed directly on the Martian surface. This should, in turn, provide much cleaner data. NASA expects to detect between a dozen and a hundred marsquakes over the course of two Earth years; none of which should exceed 6.0 on the Richter scale.
Insight’s self-hammering heat probe instrument will burrow 16 feet into the Martian soil to for the first time ever, measure heat flow from the planet's interior. This will help researchers learn whether Mars’ deep interior composition resembles that of the Earth and Moon or is radically different. By studying how seismic waves pass through the different layers of the planet (the crust, mantle and core), NASA says it can deduce the depths of these layers and their composition.
Finally, an InSight radio science experiment says NASA, will precisely measure the lander’s location to track just how much Mars wobbles in its orbit around the Sun. This should help researchers better determine the depth at which Mars’ core becomes solid and also delineate what other elements (aside from iron) may lie in Mars’ core and deep interior.
The same launch payload will include two NASA cube satellites dubbed Mars Cube One which will both trail the InSight spacecraft on their way to Mars orbit. Their goal is to relay data that the InSight lander collects back to Earth.
As for Banerdt’s own favorite mission goal?
“I am jazzed by the idea of producing the first “map” of the inside of Mars,” said Banerdt. He’s also particularly keen to gather data that will help researchers determine the locations of clear boundaries between Mars’s crust, mantle, and core while also delineating each component’s composition and temperatures.
By understanding the thermal history of the Mars’ core, says Banerdt. That will enable researchers to better estimate just when Mars’ magnetic field was initially generated from its interior dynamo and when it shut down. Without a protective planetary magnetic field, Mars’ atmosphere and any microbial surface life would have been left open to both the ravages of the Sun’s solar wind as well as an influx of galactic cosmic rays.
">In what promises to be a planetary science game-changer, NASA’s forthcoming InSight probe to the surface of Mars should provide the best data ever on the Red planet’s deep interior.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Artist's concept of NASA's InSight lander on Mars.
Due for a May launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California , NASA says the InSight (Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) lander should detect marsquakes; map Mars’ deep interior, and finally help us understand how Mars’ massive volcanoes actually formed.
InSight should also help planetary scientists understand why Mars never sustained plate tectonics.
Plate tectonics, the process by which a rocky planet recycles its global atmosphere, is arguably key to the evolution of intelligent life as we know it. On Earth, our crust is divided into seven lithospheric plates which float atop our planet’s mantle. It’s this motion of the plates and their subsequent boundary interactions that cause much of Earth’s volcanic and seismic activity and the kind of global atmospheric and surface recycling on which life depends.
Because water appears to be the key to maintaining global tectonics, like Venus, when Mars lost most of its water, maybe it also lost its plate tectonics. That is, if it ever had any.
InSight will definitely help understand why Mars did not develop sustained plate tectonics, Bruce Banerdt, the Principal Investigator for NASA’s InSight Mission to Mars, told me. But he notes that it’s still an open question whether there may have been plate tectonics within the first 100 million years of its history. Banerdt says by mapping the thickness and global structure of the crust, along with a measurement of the current heat flow, the mission will provide important constraints on geophysical thermal history models used to understand the evolutionary path that a planet can take.
As for when and if Mars was ever habitable?
“Our data is useful but more indirect,” said Banerdt.
But by understanding the history of volcanism and tectonics, Banerdt says we will have a better handle on the supply of water, carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere.
Banerdt also hopes insight will help us understand why Mars does not have a global magnetic field.
Although Mars does not have a magnetic field today, Banerdt says researchers are pretty certain that it had one in the past. Whether the core can generate a magnetic field, he says, depends on the details of its temperature, composition, and size, as well as the ability of the mantle to transfer heat to the surface.
InSight will enable all this via three instruments.
The first is a seismometer to measure marsquakes, which hasn’t been attempted since NASA’s 1970s-era Viking landers. But unlike the Viking mission, which had their seismometers mounted on top their spacecraft, NASA says that InSight’s round, dome-shaped seismometer will be placed directly on the Martian surface. This should, in turn, provide much cleaner data. NASA expects to detect between a dozen and a hundred marsquakes over the course of two Earth years; none of which should exceed 6.0 on the Richter scale.
Insight’s self-hammering heat probe instrument will burrow 16 feet into the Martian soil to for the first time ever, measure heat flow from the planet's interior. This will help researchers learn whether Mars’ deep interior composition resembles that of the Earth and Moon or is radically different. By studying how seismic waves pass through the different layers of the planet (the crust, mantle and core), NASA says it can deduce the depths of these layers and their composition.
Finally, an InSight radio science experiment says NASA, will precisely measure the lander’s location to track just how much Mars wobbles in its orbit around the Sun. This should help researchers better determine the depth at which Mars’ core becomes solid and also delineate what other elements (aside from iron) may lie in Mars’ core and deep interior.
The same launch payload will include two NASA cube satellites dubbed Mars Cube One which will both trail the InSight spacecraft on their way to Mars orbit. Their goal is to relay data that the InSight lander collects back to Earth.
As for Banerdt’s own favorite mission goal?
“I am jazzed by the idea of producing the first “map” of the inside of Mars,” said Banerdt. He’s also particularly keen to gather data that will help researchers determine the locations of clear boundaries between Mars’s crust, mantle, and core while also delineating each component’s composition and temperatures.
By understanding the thermal history of the Mars’ core, says Banerdt. That will enable researchers to better estimate just when Mars’ magnetic field was initially generated from its interior dynamo and when it shut down. Without a protective planetary magnetic field, Mars’ atmosphere and any microbial surface life would have been left open to both the ravages of the Sun’s solar wind as well as an influx of galactic cosmic rays.
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