Experts Might Use Extra Parts From Mars InSight to Find Moonquakes

Ground vibrations will be measured using a device similar to NASA Mars InSight's Seismic Experiment for Internal Structure (SEIS) on the far side of the Moon.

Experts to Use Leftover Hardware From NASA Mars InSight Lander to be Used on the Far Side of the Moon

The SEIS Very Broad Band (VBB) seismometer, which is now on Mars, was built by the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP) and the French space agency CNES. It can detect motions as tiny as ten picometers, which is significantly smaller than an atom. SEIS, which consists of three pendulums positioned at a 120-degree angle to one another, gauges the Martian surface's vertical and horizontal vibrations.

During the creation of InSight, a spare SEIS model was constructed. Now, as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, the VBB from this spare will be integrated into the Farside Seismic Suite that will be placed on the Moon in 2025. It is one of the two seismometers in use, and it will be located in the Schrödinger basin, an impact crater on the Moon's far side. A short period sensor will be used as the other seismometer.

Gabriel Pont, the project manager for CNES's Farside Seismic Suite, claims that the instrument on the Moon will only have one broadband pendulum that will be used to monitor vertical ground vibrations. The short period sensor will handle the readings in the other directions.

The new environment just needed minor adjustments. "We used a spare model of the SEIS instrument. The Farside Seismic Suite seismometer will be tuned for lunar gravity. It will be placed in a vacuum protection case called seismobox," Pont told Ars Technica.

The single vertical axis sensor would be employed with little modification, according to Philippe Lognonné of IPGP and University Paris Cité, the chief investigator of SEIS on Mars and Farside Seismic Suite's broadband sensor lead co-investigator.

According to Lognonné, this seismometer will be equivalent to or up to 10 times more frequently than the Apollo seismometers depending on the frequency.

NASA’s InSight Still Hunting Marsquakes as Power Levels Diminish

(Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
InSight captured this image of one of its dust-covered solar panels on April 24, 2022, the mission's 1,211th Martian day, or sol.

ALSO READ: NASA's Mars InSight Lander Survives Dust Storm on Red Planet

How NASA Listened and Watched When Meteors Shook Mars

Aboard Christmas Eve of last year, Mars shook, and the incredibly sensitive seismometer on NASA's InSight lander dutifully recorded the seismic jolt and then sent the data to Earth.

The New York Times said scientists have discovered that the seismic event was not caused by the internal tensions of the red planet splitting rocks using data from two NASA satellites.

Instead, a space rock striking Mars was the source of the shock waves. The finding will aid in a better understanding of Mars' interior and serves as a reminder that meteorites strike Mars just like they do the Earth.

It wasn't a little space rock either; Liliya Posiolova, the orbital scientific operations lead at Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, developed and runs two of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter cameras, estimated its diameter to be between 15 and 40 feet.

Images with higher clarity revealed that the meteor created a crater 500 feet wide in the explosion zone and spewed water ice from below. That is the closest ice has ever been found to the Martian equator.

There won't be any operational seismometers anywhere else in the solar system when InSight shuts down. But a spare seismometer made for InSight will be upgraded and flown to the moon's far side in a few years. NASA's Dragonfly mission to Titan, Saturn's biggest moon, will also carry a seismometer.