It’s now more than a year since NASA’s InSight lander mission touched down on Mars on November 26, 2018. This week, NASA published a report regarding findings on the Mars.

About InSight Mission

• The Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport mission is a robotic lander designed to study the deep interior of the planet Mars.
• It is the first mission dedicated to looking deep beneath the Martian surface.
• Among its science tools are a seismometer for detecting quakes, sensors for gauging wind and air pressure, a magnetometer, and a heat flow probe designed to take the planet’s temperature.
• The InSight mission is part of NASA’s Discovery Program.
• It is being supported by a number of European partners, which include France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the United Kingdom Space Agency (UKSA).

Key findings of the Mission

Underground: rumbles

• Mars trembles more often than expected, but also more mildly.
• This emerged from readings of the ultra-sensitive seismometer, called the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS).
• The instrument enables scientists to “hear” multiple trembling events from hundreds to thousands of miles away.
• Mars doesn’t have tectonic plates like Earth, but it does have volcanically active regions that can cause rumbles.

The surface: Magnetism

• Billions of years ago, Mars had a magnetic field.
• Although it is no longer present, it left behind what NASA describes as “ghosts” – magnetized rocks that are now between 61 m to several km below ground.
• InSight is equipped with a magnetometer, which has detected magnetic signals.
• At a Martian site called Homestead hollow, the magnetic signals are 10 times stronger than what was predicted earlier (based on data from orbiting spacecraft).

In the wind: dust devils

• InSight measures wind speed, direction and air pressure nearly continuously.
• Weather sensors have detected thousands of passing whirlwinds, which are called dust devils when they pick up grit and become visible.
• The site has more whirlwinds than any other place where a landing has been made on Mars while carrying weather sensors.
• Despite all that activity in the wind and frequent imaging, InSight’s cameras have yet to see dust devils. But SEIS can feel these whirlwinds pulling on the surface.

The core: still to come

• InSight has two radios. One is for regularly sending and receiving data. The other radio, which is more powerful, is designed to measure the “wobble” of Mars as it spins.
• This X-band radio, also known as the Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment (RISE), can eventually reveal whether the planet’s core is solid or liquid.
• A solid core would cause Mars to wobble less than a liquid one would.
• This first year of data is just a start, NASA said in the statement. When it is two years on Earth, Mars will have completed one year.

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