This week NASA’s InSight lander has detected two “strong and clear” earthquakes in an area of the planet known as Cerberus Fossae. As explained by the North American space agency, both tremors had magnitudes of 3.3 and 3.1.
Thanks to the mission displaced, It is intended to better understand the behavior of the Red Planet. Although it does not have tectonic plates like Earth, has volcanically active regions. Precisely, the two movements that occurred support the idea that Cerberus Fossae is a center of seismic activity.
Similar to those on Earth
Taichi Kawamura, from the Institute of Physics of the Globe in Paris, explained that “in the course of the mission, we have seen of the different types of ‘martemotos’: one that is more similar to those of the Moon and the other, more similar to Earth “.
In this sense, the scientist pointed out that earthquake waves travel more directly through the Earth, although those of those that occur on the Moon are usually more dispersed. Therefore, Kawamura stressed that the ‘martemotos’ are in an intermediate point between both tremors.
Calmer winds
The two earthquakes have a similarity to those previously detected by InSight: they all happened in the summer of the Martian Northern Hemisphere. It is a perfect time to listen to the earthquakes, since the winds become calmer.
John Clinton, a seismologist who is in charge of studying these phenomena, stressed that “It is wonderful to see the ‘marsquakes’ again after a long period of recording wind noise. A Martian year later, we are now much quicker to characterize seismic activity on the Red Planet. “