Upper mantle structure of Mars from InSight seismic data
Amir Khan, Savas Ceylan, Martin van Driel, Domenico Giardini, Philippe Lognonné, Henri Samuel, N. C. Schmerr, Simon C. Stähler, Cecilia Durán, Quancheng Huang, Doyeon Kim, Adrien Broquet, Constantinos Charalambous, John Clinton, Paul M. Davis, M. Drilleau, Foivos Karakostas, V. Lekić, S. M. McLennan, Ross Maguire, Chloé Michaut, M. P. Panning, W. T. Pike, Baptiste Pinot, Matthieu Plasman, John‐Robert Scholz, Rudolf Widmer‐Schnidrig, Tilman Spohn, S. E. Smrekar, W. B. Banerdt
Abstract
Single seismometer structure Because of the lack of direct seismic observations, the interior structure of Mars has been a mystery. Khan et al. , Knapmeyer-Endrun et al. , and Stähler et al. used recently detected marsquakes from the seismometer deployed during the InSight mission to map the interior of Mars (see the Perspective by Cottaar and Koelemeijer). Mars likely has a 24- to 72-kilometer-thick crust with a very deep lithosphere close to 500 kilometers. Similar to the Earth, a low-velocity layer probably exists beneath the lithosphere. The crust of Mars is likely highly enriched in radioactive elements that help to heat this layer at the expense of the interior. The core of Mars is liquid and large, ∼1830 kilometers, which means that the mantle has only one rocky layer rather than two like the Earth has. These results provide a preliminary structure of Mars that helps to constrain the different theories explaining the chemistry and internal dynamics of the planet. Science , abf2966, abf8966, abi7730, this issue p. 434 , p. 438 , p. 443 see also abj8914, p. 388