Scientists have discovered the cause of the largest earthquake recorded on Mars

There are also earthquakes on Mars. And the strongest of all so far was recorded on May 4, 2022. Scientists did not know the cause of the earthquake. They suggested that this was due to the fall of a meteorite. But after more than a year of research, a team of scientists discovered that this was not the case, revealing an important characteristic of the Red Planet.

More than an earthquake, experts say they should be called “marsquakes.” NASA has recorded more than 1,300 seismic events, since in 2018 it installed the instrumentation of the InSight mission, which operated until December last year. They were able to confirm that some of them were associated with meteorites. As well as the “marsquakes” S1000a and S1094b, recorded in September and December 2021.

The largest event, known as S1222a, had a magnitude of 4.7.. For an earthquake it seems small, but for Mars, a planet half the diameter of Earth, it is much stronger. Scientists estimate that in order for a meteorite to cause an earthquake of this type, it is necessary to find a crater with a diameter of about 300 meters and an explosion zone approximately 180 km wide.

The study report, published this week in the journal Letters on Geophysical Research, explains that various missions from around the world sampled and searched recent satellite images of Mars to find a crater of this size. Teams from China, India, Europe and the United Arab Emirates participated. They didn’t find anything.

“We concluded that the largest earthquake seen by InSight was tectonic, not impact. “This is important because it shows that faults on Mars can cause large earthquakes,” said Ben Fernando, a planetary scientist at the University of Oxford in England and lead author of the study. Reuters.

What does it mean that an earthquake on Mars is tectonic?

The outermost layer of planet Earth is divided into giant plates that constantly move, causing earthquakes. But the crust of Mars consists of one solid plate. Fernando and his team calculated that the source of the earthquake on Mars would be 20 kilometers below the surface, in the Al Qahira Valley region in the southern hemisphere of the Red Planet. In the earth’s crust, which is slowly compressing, faults and folds form.

The planet is still slowly shrinking and cooling. “The Martian soil has cracks everywhere,” explained Bruce Banerdt of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and InSight’s principal investigator. “If they slide over each other, it’s called a fault, and movement on a fault causes an earthquake.” pointed to Scientific American.

It is unclear why this earthquake will be the only one caused by tectonic activity. “At the moment we don’t know,” says Simon Stahler, a seismologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich). The energy it released exceeded the combined energy of all other earthquakes recorded by InSight.

NASA and other agencies have proposed sending a manned mission to Mars at some point. This will be the next step in space exploration since humans visited the Moon more than 50 years ago. Fernando emphasizes that the new study provides important information about the distribution of seismic activity on Mars: “This is a vital consideration for planning future human missions to the planet.”