Marsquake: NASA has detected the first marsquake on the red planet

For the first time since the start of its mission, NASA's InSight lander has detected what scientists believe to be a marsquake, NASA announced Tuesday. The probe is on the surface of Mars since November as part of a mission in the process of listening to earthquakes on the red planet.

The seismometer probe (SEIS) has been active since December, but the first earthquake was recorded on April 6, the 128th Martian day of the mission, according to a press release from CNES, the French space agency, which has built the device. It was a small earthquake – it would not have even been recorded on Earth – but a major milestone for the overall mission of the LG.

"We are waiting for our first marsquake for months," said Philippe Lognonné, head of the SEIS team at the Paris Institute of Earth Physics (IPGP) in France. "It's so exciting to finally have evidence that Mars is still seismically active, and we look forward to sharing detailed results once we have studied it further and modeled our data."

March, I hear you. I have detected discreet but distinct tremors #March. The low rumblings seem to come from the inside of the planet and are still being studied by my team. Listen.?https: //t.co/GxR1xdRx1F pic.twitter.com/Z8Hn03jigO

– NASA InSight (@NASAInSight) April 23, 2019

Although the slight earthquake may have been caused by wind or other external forces, InSight team is "confident" it came from Mars itself. However, the earthquake was too small to provide data on the Martian interior, one of the main objectives of InSight. The seismometer measured three other activity signals since the first, but they were all much weaker than the first one.

The earthquake is comparable to the seismic activity measured on the moon during the Apollo missions, between 1969 and 1977. During this period, astronauts have measured thousands of earthquakes.

"The first readings of InSight take up the science that began with the Apollo missions," said InSight senior researcher, Bruce Banerdt, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We have collected the background noise up to now, but this first event officially inaugurates a new field: Martian seismology."

Unlike the Earth, Mars and the Moon are devoid of tectonic plates. As a result, their earthquakes are caused by faults or fractures of the crust. Fortunately, the Martian surface is much quieter than the Earth, which allowed the seismometer to detect such snoring.

In a recording released by NASA, three distinct sounds can be heard: the Mars wind, the supposed earthquake and the robotic arm of the LG moving to take pictures. The vibrations being undetectable for the human ear, the sound recording has been multiplied by 60.