SENSORS designed with the help of scientists in Oxford have detected 400 'marsquakes' 140 million miles away from Earth.
The NASA InSight lander recorded the seismic vibrations on Mars in the first year of its mission by a set of silicon sensors developed in the UK for InSight’s Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS).
Oxford University researchers were among those who worked on the project, which used £4m funding from the UK Space Agency to develop three sensors which are sensitive enough to detect motion at sub-atomic scales.
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Science minister Amanda Solloway said: “Detecting hundreds of marsquakes on a planet 140 million miles from Earth, using sensors developed in the UK, is an important achievement.
“This is an example of how world-leading UK science and our growing space sector contribute to international missions, furthering human understanding of the Solar System.”
The NASA Insight mission is the first to look deep beneath the Martian surface and detected the first ever recorded marsquake on April 6, 2019. By the end of last year it was detecting an average of two quakes every day.
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The findings suggest that Mars experiences quakes more often, but also more mildly than expected with the largest measuring 4.0 on the Richter scale.
Seismic waves change as they move through different materials and this allows scientists to understand the inner structure of Mars.
From this, they can also learn how other planets, moons and meteorites with rocky surfaces, including Earth, formed billions of years ago.
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