Editor's note

With more than 20 successfully completed missions to Mars so far, it is no wonder that we have learned so much about the planet’s surface, atmosphere and history. What we don’t know very much about, however, is what’s going on inside the planet’s interior.

Now NASA’s InSight mission, which landed on the planet in November 2018, has started to fill this gap – with the results from its first ten months on the surface published in a series of papers. These give a tantalising glimpse of what the planet’s interior is like and suggest that there are active faults in the planet’s crust that cause “marsquakes”.

This is important. Unlike the Earth, Mars does not have tectonic plates. It has therefore been suggested that vibrations caused by meteorites hitting the surface may be to blame for the quakes. But the research shows that the quakes come from inside the planet itself.

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Miriam Frankel

Co-host, To the moon and beyond Podcast

Top Story
Artist’s impression of Mars InSight. NASA/JPL-Caltech

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