Nasa’s InSight lander has revealed the depth of Mars’s crust

 Nasa’s InSight lander has revealed the depth of Mars’s crust and the size of its central core by using data from dozens of marsquakes captured since the probe landed in 2018.

Some surprising findings as the InSight lander uses seismology to map out the inside of the Red Planet.

The NASA team operating the InSight lander on Mars last week published its analysis of the more than 700 minor “marsquakes” recorded by the vehicle since it began surface operations on the Red Planet in February 2019. The world now has its first view of the inner workings of another planet, with potential implications for a better understanding of how the solar system developed and the evolution of life on Earth.

One might have imagined Mars to be a smaller version of Earth, but the seismic noises detected by InSight suggest not only different geological composition but different formation and heat-flow dynamics as well. Petroleum engineers use seismic waves that travel and refract though deep layers of the Earth’s crust to search for pockets of oil and gas. The InSight team designed the lander to record seismic waves reverberating on the surface of Mars and use them to explore the inner structure of the planet