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Meteoroid Strike on Far Side of Mars Reveals Exciting New Details About Planet's Core

People have been looking at Mars and even sending stuff up there for so long that we feel we know the place by heart: it's a reddish, dead world bathed in blueish light, filled with dust, and ready to welcome us humans when we eventually dare to venture there.
NASA's InSight discovers more about the core of Mars 8 photos
Photo: NASA
NASA InSight detects its largest ever quake on MarsNASA InSight detects its largest ever quake on MarsNASA InSight detects its largest ever quake on MarsNASA InSight detects its largest ever quake on MarsNASA InSight detects its largest ever quake on MarsNASA InSight detects its largest ever quake on MarsNASA InSight detects its largest ever quake on Mars
But for all the studies made and the hardware sent to the Red Planet, the place is still a chest full of mysteries. And not only on the surface, but also beneath that asteroid's impact-scarred crust.

Like most other planets, Mars' structure comprises a central core, a rocky mantle, and a solid crust. We don't know that for a fact, but it's estimated that the core has a radius of up to 1,300 miles (2,100 km), and it comprises iron, nickel, and sulfur as primary elements. And least, that's what we thought until now, when a new science paper seems to twist that knowledge around a bit.

You see, among the many pieces of hardware humanity sent to Mars was something called InSight. The lander touched the Martian surface in 2018, and it was officially declared dead on the job last December. But when it was alive, it sent back fascinating scienctific data.

InSight had one central mission: looking at the neighboring planet's interior through various means. It's in the name, really, as InSight stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport.

During its time on Mars, the lander sent back a lot of data and images, and it will take scientists decades, NASA says, to go through it all. But we already have the first results of the mammoth analysis, and they have to do with Mars' core.

NASA InSight detects its largest ever quake on Mars
Photo: NASA
Back in 2021, in August and September, two earthquakes shook the planet's surface. One was caused by a meteoroid impact, while the other was of undetermined origin. But they both occurred on the opposite side of the planet from InSight, which was crucial for the findings to be made.

An entire planet separating the lander from the quake's point of origin meant seismic waves had to go through the planet's core before reaching InSight's instruments. And that allowed a few interesting facts to be discovered.

First, it seems the core is smaller and denser than officially believed. We're not told exactly how much so in the very long paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, but it's about the size of our Moon (which has a radius of 1,080 miles/1,738 km), and twice as dense.

Then, we now know more about what makes up the core. Aside from iron, nickel, and sulfur, about a fifth of the core (that's 20 percent) is made of sulfur, oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen.

The findings are significant because they will help us better "understand the conditions in our solar system when planets were forming and how these conditions affected the planets that formed."

Because this is also the first time we were able to make direct observations of another planet's core, InSight will likely spawn other similar hardware to be sent elsewhere in the solar system.
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Editor's note: Gallery shows various InSight images.

About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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