Microsoft Word In a first, nasa mars lander feels shockwaves from meteor impact

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Trembling planet 
InSight touched down on Mars in the blandest spot its 
team members could identify—a flat, sandy plain called 
Elysium Planitia near the planet’s equator. 
“I’m very, very happy that it looks like we have an 
incredibly safe and boring-looking landing plain. That’s 
exactly what we were going for—it’s what the landing 
site selection people promised me," JPL’s 
Tom Hoffman
, 
the InSight project manager, 
said in 2018
, after it landed. 
"They promised me sandy with no rocks. But there’s one 
rock, so I might have to talk with them about that.” 
Unlike the spacecraft that focus on dramatic Martian 
terrains—the planet’s massive volcanoes, dramatic rift 
valleys and polar ice caps—InSight’s job was to look 
beneath the surface. And that meant it needed no 
distractions, plus plenty of sunlight to power its 
instruments. Soon after landing, InSight unfurled its 
solar panels and deployed an exquisitely sensitive 
seismometer that would monitor the trembling planet. As 
Mars shakes, seismic waves bounce around and travel 

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through the planet’s interior. Those waves carry 
information about the materials and boundaries they’ve 
moved through, so scientists can collect them and use 
those records to make a map of the Martian crust, mantle, 
and 
curiously large core
. 
Over nearly four Earth-years, InSight has measured more 
than 1,300 tremors. For much of the mission, the 
Marsquakes have been small; but over the past year, a 
handful of large quakes have jolted the planet, with the 
strongest—nearly a magnitude 5, 
something scientists 
had been hoping for
—
rolling through in May
. Now, as 
the spacecraft’s power dwindles, mission leaders say the 
spacecraft lived a good life. With the exception of one 
hiccup, a heat probe that 
couldn’t burrow into the 
Martian soil 
as expected, the mission has met its 
objectives. 
“We’ve been able to illuminate the interior structure of 
Mars for the first time, instead of having a fuzzy picture 
that is informed by analogy to the Earth, or the moon,” 
Banerdt says. “Mars is now a solidly understood planet. 
It’s not like we know everything about what’s going on 
inside, but we know what the basic building blocks of 
Mars are.”