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The Seismicity on Mars as Recorded by Insight's Marsquake Service

Session: Insight Seismology on Mars: Results From the First Martian Year of Data and Prospects for the Future

Type: Oral

Date: 4/23/2021

Presentation Time: 02:15 PM Pacific

Description: 

Twenty-five months after the InSight lander arrived on Mars, the first full martian year of continuous seismic data has been collected by the SEIS seismometer package. SEIS continues to exceed performance expectations in terms of the observed minimum noise. The Marsquake Service is tasked with creating and curating the seismicity catalogue for Mars. To date, about 500 distant marsquakes, and almost 800 events likely associated with local thermal cracking have been identified. The background noise recorded by SEIS is strongly sensitive to local winds, whose strength and duration is changing across the martian year. Marsquake signal amplitudes remain small and marsquakes can generally only be detected during the quietest periods that mostly occur during the evenings. For many regional marsquakes, crustal or mantle body phase arrivals may be identified and used to determine distances. However, polarised energy is rarely observed in marsquakes, so estimates of back azimuths, and hence also event locations, are rare. Here, we demonstrate how we detect and characterise marsquakes, and describe the challenges we face dealing with the Martian dataset. We summarise the content and the features of the marsquake catalogue recorded so far. Further, we review the seismicity on Mars, including location, magnitude, magnitude-frequency distribution, tectonic context and possible seismic sources.

Presenting Author: Savas Ceylan

Student Presenter: No

Authors