Single seismometer structure
Because of the lack of direct seismic observations, the interior structure of Mars has been a mystery. Khan
et al.
, Knapmeyer-Endrun
et al.
, and Stähler
et al.
used ...recently detected marsquakes from the seismometer deployed during the InSight mission to map the interior of Mars (see the Perspective by Cottaar and Koelemeijer). Mars likely has a 24- to 72-kilometer-thick crust with a very deep lithosphere close to 500 kilometers. Similar to the Earth, a low-velocity layer probably exists beneath the lithosphere. The crust of Mars is likely highly enriched in radioactive elements that help to heat this layer at the expense of the interior. The core of Mars is liquid and large, ∼1830 kilometers, which means that the mantle has only one rocky layer rather than two like the Earth has. These results provide a preliminary structure of Mars that helps to constrain the different theories explaining the chemistry and internal dynamics of the planet.
Science
, abf2966, abf8966, abi7730, this issue p.
434
, p.
438
, p.
443
see also abj8914, p.
388
Data from the InSight mission on Mars help constrain the structure and properties of the martian mantle.
A planet’s crust bears witness to the history of planetary formation and evolution, but for Mars, no absolute measurement of crustal thickness has been available. Here, we determine the structure of the crust beneath the InSight landing site on Mars using both marsquake recordings and the ambient wavefield. By analyzing seismic phases that are reflected and converted at subsurface interfaces, we find that the observations are consistent with models with at least two and possibly three interfaces. If the second interface is the boundary of the crust, the thickness is 20 ± 5 kilometers, whereas if the third interface is the boundary, the thickness is 39 ± 8 kilometers. Global maps of gravity and topography allow extrapolation of this point measurement to the whole planet, showing that the average thickness of the martian crust lies between 24 and 72 kilometers. Independent bulk composition and geodynamic constraints show that the thicker model is consistent with the abundances of crustal heat-producing elements observed for the shallow surface, whereas the thinner model requires greater concentration at depth.
Ultraslow spreading ridges form the slowest divergent plate boundaries and exhibit distinct spreading processes in volcanically active magmatic sections and intervening amagmatic sections. Local ...seismicity studies of ultraslow spreading ridges until now cover only parts of segments and give insight into spreading processes at confined locations. Here, we present a microseismicity data set that allows to study spreading processes on the scale of entire segments. Our network of 26 ocean bottom seismometers covered around 160 km along axis of the ultraslow spreading Knipovich Ridge in the Greenland Sea and recorded earthquakes for a period of about 1 year. We find seismicity varying distinctly along‐axis. The maximum earthquake depths shallow over distances of 70 km toward the Logachev volcanic center. Here, swarm activity occurs in an otherwise aseismic zone. Melts may thus be guided along the subparallel topography of the lithosphere‐asthenosphere boundary toward major volcanic centers explaining the uneven along‐axis melt distribution typical for ultraslow ridges. Absence of shallow seismicity in the upper 8 km of the lithosphere with a band of deep seismicity underneath offsets presumably melt‐poor regions from magma richer sections. Aseismic deformation in these regions may indicate weakening of mantle rocks by alteration. We do not find obvious indications for major detachment faulting that characterizes magma‐poor spreading at some ultraslow spreading segments. The highly oblique spreading of Knipovich Ridge may be the reason for a fine‐scale segmentation of the seismic activity with zones of weak seismicity possibly indicating transform motion on short obliquely oriented faults.
Plain Language Summary
At mid‐ocean spreading ridges, tectonic plates drift apart and new seafloor is built by upwelling magma. The slowest spreading ridges do not receive enough magma to build new seafloor along the entire ridge. Rather, they show widely spaced volcanic centers with magma‐poor areas in‐between. The study of small earthquakes with seismometers placed on the seafloor has greatly helped to understand how new seafloor forms. Since such studies require substantial logistic effort, only confined ridge sections have been studied and spreading processes operating at segment‐scale remain poorly understood. In this study, we present for the first time observations of earthquakes covering several segments and one major volcanic center along the Knipovich Ridge in the Greenland Sea. Underneath the volcano, earthquake swarms and a gap in seismicity indicate recent magmatic activity. The maximum depth of earthquakes marks the thickness of the mechanically strong lithosphere. It shallows over 70 km toward the volcano such that melts can be channeled over large distances to the prominent volcanoes. Magma‐poor regions have deep earthquakes but do not show earthquake activity in the upper 8 km. We suppose that water reacts with the mantle rocks that become too weak to break in earthquakes.
Key Points
Magma‐poor sections are distinguished from magma‐rich sections by deeper hypocenters and an absence of shallow seismicity
Shallowing maximum earthquake depths over distances of 70 km suggest along‐axis melt focusing toward major volcanic centers
Major detachment faults on the highly oblique spreading Knipovich Ridge were not obvious in the observed seismicity
The InSight mission (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) has been collecting high-quality seismic data from Mars since February 2019, shortly after its ...landing. The Marsquake Service (MQS) is the team responsible for the prompt review of all seismic data recorded by the InSight's seismometer (SEIS), marsquake event detection, and curating seismicity catalogues. Until sol 1011 (end of September 2021), MQS have identified 951 marsquakes that we interpret to occur at regional and teleseismic distances, and 1062 very short duration events that are most likely generated by local thermal stresses nearby the SEIS package. Here, we summarize the seismic data collected until sol 1011, version 9 of the InSight seismicity catalogue. We focus on the significant seismicity that occurred after sol 478, the end date of version 3, the last catalogue described in a dedicated paper. In this new period, almost a full Martian year of new data has been collected, allowing us to observe seasonal variations in seismicity that are largely driven by strong changes in atmospheric noise that couples into the seismic signal. Further, the largest, closest and most distant events have been identified, and the number of fully located events has increased from 3 to 7. In addition to the new seismicity, we document improvements in the catalogue that include the adoption of InSight-calibrated Martian models and magnitude scales, the inclusion of additional seismic body-wave phases, and first focal mechanism solutions for three of the regional marsquakes at distances ∼30°.
•The V9 catalogue includes 951 events, of which 486 are new since the previous report.•Multiple large marsquakes with MWMa 4.0–4.2 were recorded.•Some new events are within 100 km of the lander and beyond the core shadow which were not seen before.•Four events are located close to the lander, which include chirps and are interpreted as meteorite impacts.•The catalogue also includes 1062 very local events that may be due to thermal stresses.
The Marsquake catalogue from InSight, sols 0–478 Clinton, John F.; Ceylan, Savas; van Driel, Martin ...
Physics of the earth and planetary interiors,
January 2021, 2021-01-00, 2021-01, Letnik:
310
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) mission began collecting high quality seismic data on Mars in February 2019. This manuscript documents the ...seismicity observed by SEIS, InSight's seismometer, from this time until the end of March 2020. Within the InSight project, the Marsquake Service (MQS) is responsible for prompt review of all seismic data collected by InSight, detection of events that are likely to be of seismic origin, and curation and release of seismic catalogues. In the first year of data collection, MQS have identified 465 seismic events that we interpret to be from regional and teleseismic marsquakes. Seismic events are grouped into 2 different event families: the low frequency family is dominated by energy at long period below 1 s, and the high frequency family primarily include energy at and above 2.4 Hz. Event magnitudes, from Mars-specific scales, range from 1.3 to 3.7. A third class of events with very short duration but high frequency bursts have been observed 712 times. These are likely associated with a local source driven by thermal stresses. This paper describes the data collected so far in the mission and the procedures under which MQS operates; summarises the content of the current MQS seismic catalogue; and presents the key features of the events we have observed so far, using the largest events as examples.
•The Marsquake Service is providing updated catalogues of Martian seismicity as recorded on InSight.•465 distant marsquakes have been identified in the first 478 martian days (sol) since InSight landed.•This version of the catalogue includes an additional 712 events that may be due to local cracking from thermal forcing.
First Focal Mechanisms of Marsquakes Brinkman, Nienke; Stähler, Simon C.; Giardini, Domenico ...
Journal of geophysical research. Planets,
April 2021, Letnik:
126, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Since February 2019, NASA's InSight lander is recording seismic signals on the planet Mars, which, for the first time, allows to observe ongoing tectonic processes with geophysical methods. A number ...of Marsquakes have been located in the Cerberus Fossae graben system in Elysium Planitia and further west, in the Orcus Patera depression. We present a first study of the focal mechanisms of three well‐recorded events (S0173a, S0183a, S0235b) to determine the processes dominating in the source region. We infer for all three events a predominantly extensional setting. Our method is adapted to the case of a single, multicomponent receiver and based on fitting waveforms of P and S waves against synthetic seismograms computed for the initial crustal velocity model derived by the InSight team. We explore the uncertainty due to the single‐station limitation and find that even data recorded by one station constrains the mechanisms (reasonably) well. For the events in the Cerberus Fossae region (S0173a, S0235b) normal faulting with a relatively steep dipping fault plane is inferred, suggesting an extensional regime mainly oriented E‐W to NE‐SW. The fault regime in the Orcus Patera region is not determined uniquely because only the P wave can be used for the source inversion. However, we find that the P and weak S waves of the S0183a event show similar polarities to the event S0173, which indicates similar fault regimes.
Plain Language Summary
As time passes, the mysterious interior of Mars is slowly being unraveled due to the detection and analysis of Marsquakes recorded with a seismograph carried by the InSight lander. Close to 400 Marsquakes have so far been identified, yet only a handful of those show similarities to earthquakes. Those earth‐like events are located near the Cerberus Fossae and Orcus Patera regions. We take advantage of the similarity between Marsquakes and earthquakes and apply a methodology developed for earthquake characterization before seismic recorders became abundant on Earth. We find that the Marsquakes in these source regions are dominated by extensional rather than compressing features. This is important information to further understand what causes Marsquakes.
Key Points
We infer the tectonic setting in Cerberus Fossae on Mars by seismic source inversion
We present a robust inversion strategy for single‐station moment tensor inversion
Three Marsquakes recorded by InSight reveal a predominantly normal faulting regime
We present two independent, automated methods for estimating the horizontal misorientations of ocean bottom seismic sensors from their recorded data. The techniques measure the three-dimensional ...directions of particle motion of (1) P-waves and (2) Rayleigh waves of earthquake recordings. For P-waves, we used a principal component analysis to determine the directions of particle motions (polarisations) in multiple frequency passbands. Since P-wave polarisation may deviate from the direction of propagation due to seismic anisotropy and dipping discontinuities beneath stations, we further corrected for these deviations using a simple fit equation which yields sensor orientations of significantly increased accuracy. For Rayleigh waves, we evaluated the degree of elliptical polarisation in the vertical plane in the time and frequency domain. We apply both methods to 57 three-component broadband and wideband seismometers that were installed for 13 months on the ocean floor around La Réunion hotspot as part of the RHUM-RUM project (www.rhum-rum.net/). For P-wave polarisations we obtained misorientation estimates for 31 out of 44 functioning ocean-bottom seismometers (OBS), with an average uncertainty (95% confidence interval) of 11° per station. At 7 of these OBS, data coverage was sufficient to correct polarisation measurements for underlying seismic anisotropy and dipping discontinuities which improved the average orientation uncertainty to 6° per station. For Rayleigh-wave polarisations we obtained misorientation estimates for 40 out of 44 functioning OBS, with an average uncertainty (95% confidence interval) of 16° per station. Results obtained from the two methods are fully consistent within their respective error bars; the orientation angles differ on average by 3.1° and 3.7° for circular mean and median statistics, respectively. The good agreement between the two methods also makes them useful for reliably detecting possible misorientations of terrestrial seismic stations.
At mid-ocean ridges volcanism generally decreases with spreading rate but surprisingly massive volcanic centres occur at the slowest spreading ridges. These volcanoes can host unexpectedly strong ...earthquakes and vigorous, explosive submarine eruptions. Our understanding of the geodynamic processes forming these volcanic centres is still incomplete due to a lack of geophysical data and the difficulty to capture their rare phases of magmatic activity. We present a local earthquake tomographic image of the magma plumbing system beneath the Segment 8 volcano at the ultraslow-spreading Southwest Indian Ridge. The tomography shows a confined domain of partial melt under the volcano. We infer that from there melt is horizontally transported to a neighbouring ridge segment at 35 km distance where microearthquake swarms and intrusion tremor occur that suggest ongoing magmatic activity. Teleseismic earthquakes around the Segment 8 volcano, prior to our study, indicate that the current magmatic spreading episode may already have lasted over a decade and hence its temporal extent greatly exceeds the frequent short-lived spreading episodes at faster opening mid-ocean ridges.
We present SKS splitting measurements in the Western Indian Ocean, recorded on 20 land and 57 seafloor seismometers deployed by the RHUM-RUM experiment (Réunion Hotspot and Upper Mantle – Réunions ...Unterer Mantel). We discuss our splitting observations within their geodynamic settings and compare them to SKS splitting parameters predicted from an azimuthally anisotropic Rayleigh wave tomography model that includes the RHUM-RUM data. We find that anisotropic directions poorly correlate with the present-day motion of the Somali plate, which at <2.6 cm/yr may be too slow to cause strongly sheared fabric in the asthenosphere. Fast split directions (Φ) between La Réunion and the Central Indian Ridge (CIR) trend E–W and provide strong, first seismological evidence for near-horizontal flow in the asthenosphere that connects the Réunion mantle upwelling with the CIR, supporting a long-standing hypothesis on plume–ridge interaction. In the vicinity of the Réunion hotspot, we observe a seismic anisotropy pattern indicative of a parabolic asthenospheric flow controlled by the Réunion mantle upwelling and its consecutive asthenospheric spreading. We furthermore observe ridge-normal Φ along the CIR and ridge-parallel Φ along the Southwest Indian Ridge (SWIR), both mainly attributed to asthenospheric mantle flows. In the Mozambique Channel between East-Africa and Madagascar, we attribute E–W trending Φ to frozen lithospheric structures, recording the paleo-orientation of the spreading ridges that enabled Madagascar's separation away from Africa. Based on the synopsis of this and previous SKS splitting studies at mid-ocean ridges, we propose that ridge-normal Φ may develop at fast and intermediate spreading ridges (e.g., CIR and East Pacific Rise) and ridge-parallel Φ could be characteristic to slow spreading ridges (e.g., SWIR, Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the paleo-ridges in the Mozambique Channel).
•We find strong evidence for an asthenospheric Réunion plume-Central Indian Ridge connection.•At the Southwest Indian Ridge mantle may flow along-axis, channeled by lithospheric walls.•E–W anisotropy in the Mozambique Channel results likely from Africa's separation from Gondwana.•At mid-ocean ridges, mantle flows may generally orient as a function of the ridges' spreading rate.•Somali plate motion does not produce significant asthenospheric anisotropy due to its slow motion of <2.6 cm/yr.
The InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) mission landed on the surface of Mars on November 26, 2018. One of the scientific instruments in the ...payload that is essential to the mission is the SEIS package (Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure) which includes a very broadband and a short period seismometer. More than one year since the landing, SEIS continues to be fully operational and has been collecting an exceptional data set which contains not only the signals of seismic origins, but also noise and artifacts induced by the martian environment, the hardware on the ground that includes the seismic sensors, and the programmed operational activities of the lander. Many of these non-seismic signals will be unfamiliar to the scientific community. In addition, many of these signals have signatures that may resemble seismic events either or both in time and frequency domains. Here, we report our observations of common non-seismic signals as seen during the first 478 sols of the SEIS data, i.e. from landing until the end of March 2020. This manuscript is intended to provide a guide to scientists who use the data recorded on SEIS, detailing the general attributes of the most commonly observed non-seismic features. It will help to clarify the characteristics of the seismic dataset for future research, and to avoid misinterpretations when searching for marsquakes.
•This paper is a summary of the InSight data from Mars, mainly focusing on the seismic data set.•We describe the signals of non-seismic origins that potentially can cause misinterpretations as marsquakes.•We outline the common features in the data such as artifacts and patterns for future reference that may be unfamiliar to the scientific community.
We present a new class of seismic signals that are recorded by the seismometer placed on the surface of Mars as part of the NASA InSight mission. The signals, termed super high frequency (SF) events, ...are of short duration (∼20 s), are often similar in amplitude, and feature high‐frequency energy between ∼5 and 30 Hz that is dominant on the horizontal components. For detection and characterization of SF events, we employ the available continuous 20 samples per second (sps) data from the Very Broadband instrument. Due to bandwidth limitations, 100 sps data from the short‐period sensor are only partially obtainable, but they aid in analysis of the frequency content above 10 Hz and in distinguishing the events from high‐frequency noise. From June 2019 to May 2020, 780 SF events have been detected. The events observed occur in repeatable patterns that last for weeks. Initially, the SF events were clustered in the hours before sunset, but more recently, they have been distributed across the evening period. Based on template matching techniques, we have identified 16 distinct families that generally follow the temporal clusters. A thermal origin of these events is suggested, since the majority of the events fall within a ±2 h time window around sunset with extreme temperature changes. The SF events have similarities with thermal events observed on the lunar surface from data collected during the Apollo missions.
Plain Language Summary
The seismometers on Mars are recording high‐frequency signals of short duration. Seven hundred and eighty of these events have been found so far, that can be categorized into families with comparable signal shape. Each family repeats for a limited number of days at similar times of the day. At first, they occurred at or shortly before sunset, but more recently they are being observed later in the Martian evening. We infer these signals originate from close to the lander but not the lander itself, and may be related to thermal cracking, like the lunar thermal events observed during the Apollo missions.
Key Points
Super high frequency events are a class of signals observed by the InSight seismometer on Mars
Seven hundred and eighty events have been observed, typically lasting 20 s with energy mainly on horizontal components between 5 and 30 Hz
Events appear in clusters and are likely associated with local thermal sources similar to observations on the Moon
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