INSIGHT
LANDER - SCI & TECH
News: Studies provide more
insight into the internal structure of Mars
What's
in the news?
● Mars’s
liquid iron core is likely to be surrounded by a fully molten silicate layer,
according to a pair of studies published in Nature.
● These
results offer a new interpretation of the interior of Mars, suggesting its core
is smaller and denser than previously proposed.
Insights
mission:
● The
Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport
(InSight) mission is a robotic lander
designed to study the deep interior of the planet Mars.
● NASA’s
Insight spacecraft which is located on Mars has made an estimate of the size of
the Martian core.
● It
finds that Mars’s core is about half the size of Earth’s core and measures
between 1,810 and 1,860 km.
Lander:
● The
lander carries a robotic arm 1.8 m long.
● It
uses a set of instruments to study the makeup and dimensions of the planet’s
core, mantle and crust.
● It
is powered by two solar panels, and carries a seismometer, heat probe and a
radio science experiment.
● Two
complementary engineering cameras help with navigation and hazard avoidance.
Objective
of Lander:
● To
understand how rocky planets formed and evolved, study the interior structure
and geological processes of Mars through its various layers, such as the core,
the mantle and the crust.
● To
figure out just how tectonically active Mars is today and how often meteorites
impact it. This included measuring marsquakes, and more than 1,300 quakes have
been detected.
Key
findings of the InSight mission:
● Mars
is seismically active through the detection of hundreds of quakes some of which
can be traced to a volcanic region nearly 1,000 miles away.
● However,
Mars doesn’t have tectonic plates like Earth, but it does have volcanically
active regions that can cause rumbles.