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The Marsquake Service: Facing Off-World Challenges for Seismic Networks

Description: 

For more than four years the Marsquake Service (MQS) has been detecting and cataloguing marsquakes from the near realtime data recorded by SEIS, the seismometer deployed to the surface of Mars by InSight. With only a single station, there are obvious challenges in providing a catalogue for the entire planet. Due to the low SNR of marsquakes and the extreme variability of background noise, impulsive seismic signals are rarely evident and standard automated algorithms cannot be used to identify marsquakes, and manual review is needed. Here, we review the procedures and methods developed by MQS and describe the contents of the catalogue.

The MQS tools are based on best practice and standards used in seismic networks on Earth, for example we use a single station interactive analysis GUI based on SeisComP. Consistent procedures were developed to distinguish marsquakes from atmospheric noise or other data anomalies, classify events, pick phases, determine distance using a suite of Martian velocity models which has been updated during the mission, determine back azimuth, and locate events. Mars magnitudes are assigned using calibrated magnitude relations including the use of P and S body phase amplitudes, 2.4 Hz resonance amplitude and spectral fitting. The final catalogue includes 1319 marsquakes. Six events are known meteoroid impacts confirmed from visual imaging, their proximity to the original MQS locations confirms our location methodology. The catalogue contains quakes from within 1 degree of the lander out to 146 degrees distance and moment magnitudes span from 1 to 4.6. Body waves, crustal phases, surface waves, atmospheric shock waves and even core phases have been observed. Future planetary missions or even remote single stations on Earth will benefit from the MQS experience and the catalogue will be the foundation for planetary seismicity studies in the coming decades.

Session: Network Seismology: Recent Developments, Challenges and Lessons Learned

Type: Oral

Date: 4/20/2023

Presentation Time: 11:00 AM (local time)

Presenting Author: Anna C. Horleston

Student Presenter: No

Invited Presentation: 

Authors