NASA's InSight Lander investigates quakes in Mars

InSight Lander, NASA's first mission to explore Mars' geology, is investigating the Red Planet's interior via recording tremblors known as "‘Marsquakes".

NASA's InSight is the first vehicle to detect tremblors in Mars and generally in any environment apart from Earth and the Moon. It has traced 322 quakes since its arrival (about a year ago) and it is currently detecting about two tremblors per day showing that the rate of quakes has increased.

The vehicle's seismometer is tracing marsquakes during the night when the winds' speed in the Martian ground drop. According to Domenico Giardini, Professor of Seismology and Geodynamics at the ETH Zürich, the tremblors can be divided into 2 categories:

• High-frequency quakes: The most common Marsquakes that derive from ruptures in the shallow Martian crust and
• Low-frequency quakes: The less common Marsquakes that are triggered deeper into the Red Planet's mantle.

Seismic shocks on Mars differ from earthquakes as they are much smaller. Therefore, their detection is more difficult. Scientists have detected 2 Marsquakes with a magnitude of about 4.0 and managed to derive their initial source. Those quakes were low-frequency type and occurred in Cerberus Fossae, a geologically active region located around 1,600 kilometers away from NASA's vehicle. According to researchers, the tremblors were probably associated with high stress induced along faults in the crust of the planet.

One of InSight’s major purposes was to investigate the Martian ground by digging 5-meter holes inside the ground. However, the endeavor is still unsuccessful as scientists underestimated the soil's characteristics.

The vehicle's mole was designed to perform in soils with no or minimal cohesion. However, the place where InSight landed consists of cohesive soils and when the mole started digging into the ground, the soil around it became compacted into a pit. Therefore, the mole was not capable of producing enough friction to keep digging. According to Tilman Spohn, a space scientist at the German Aerospace Center in Cologne, Germany, laboratory tests with cohesive soils had been conducted but scientists did not anticipate such ground conditions in the region.

Currently, engineers are trying to overcome this problem by attaching the mole to one side of the pit and utilizing the lander's arm to provide more force. 

Another finding the mission has provided includes the detection of strange magnetic pulses that appear during the night. The magnetic disturbance is measured by the InSight's magnetometer and is probably associated with the space environment around the Red Planet.