Marsquake

What is Marsquake?

• A marsquake is a quake which, much like an earthquake, would be a shaking of the surface or interior of the planet Mars as a result of the sudden release of energy in the planet’s interior, such as the result of plate tectonics, which most quakes on Earth originate from, or possibly from hotspots such as Olympus Mons or the Tharsis Montes
• On Earth, quakes are caused by shifts in tectonic plates. Mars, however, does not have tectonic plates, and its crust is a giant plate. 
• According to NASA, ‘marsquakes’ are caused due to stresses that cause rock fractures or faults in its crust.
• NASA’s rover first landed on Mars in November 2018, and has since heard 1,313 quakes.  
• The detection and analysis of marsquakes could be informative to probing the interior structure of Mars, as well as identifying whether any of Mars’s many volcanoes continue to be volcanically active or not.
• Quakes have been observed and well-documented on the Moon, and there is evidence of past quakes on Venus. 
• However, marsquakes were not definitely observed until 2019. 
• Compelling evidence has been found that Mars has in the past been seismically more active, with clear magnetic striping over a large region of southern Mars. 
• Magnetic striping on Earth is often a sign of a region of particularly thin crust splitting and spreading, forming new land in the slowly separating rifts, a prime example of this being the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. 
• The 4,000 km long canyon system, Valles Marineris, has been suggested to be the remnant of an ancient Martian strike-slip fault.
• The first confirmed seismic event emanating from Valles Marineris, a quake with a magnitude of 4.2, was detected by InSight on 25 August 2021, proving it to be an active fault.