Mars continues to surprise scientists with its geological activity. While the Red Planet lacks the tectonic movements that shape Earth, it still experiences seismic activity caused by internal forces and meteoroid impacts.
Recent discoveries, powered by artificial intelligence, have revealed a new crater on Mars that evidences how deeply impact-generated seismic waves can travel.
This finding challenges existing models of the planet’s interior and opens new avenues for understanding its geological history.
A pair of recent studies published in Geophysical Research Letters detail how scientists linked a newly formed crater to seismic activity recorded by NASA’s InSight lander.
This marks a major breakthrough and shows that impact-related tremors can penetrate deeper into the Martian mantle than previously thought.
With the help of data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), researchers can now refine their models of the planet’s subsurface, which will enhance our knowledge of Mars and also our understanding of other rocky worlds, including Earth and its Moon.
Impact crater that changed Mars research
NASA’s InSight mission was designed to probe the interior of Mars and offer an unprecedented look at the planet’s crust, mantle, and core.
The lander, which arrived in 2018, deployed the first seismometer ever placed on the Martian surface.
Over its four-year mission, InSight detected more than 1,300 marsquakes, some caused by internal forces and others triggered by space rocks striking the planet.
By studying how seismic waves move through different layers of Mars, scientists have been able to infer the planet’s internal structure. Unlike Earth, which has a dynamic interior, Mars appears to have a colder, more rigid mantle.
However, new findings suggest that some seismic waves travel deeper than previously assumed, indicating that the Martian mantle may be more complex than once thought.
One of the most important recent discoveries involved a meteoroid impact near Cerberus Fossae, a geologically active region on Mars.
The impact not only created a visible crater but also generated seismic waves that traveled in an unexpected way, revealing a new pathway for seismic energy through the planet’s mantle.
Mars impact craters and seismic waves
Scientists have long relied on seismic data to study the interiors of planets. On Earth, earthquakes help researchers understand how our planet’s layers interact.
On Mars, where seismic activity is much weaker, researchers use marsquakes and impact events to investigate the nature of the subsurface.
The newly discovered Mars crater, which measures 71 feet (21.5 meters) in diameter, is located over 1,019 miles (1,640 km) from InSight’s landing site.
The seismic energy it produced was surprisingly strong for an impact at that distance. Scientists originally believed that Mars’s crust would dampen seismic waves from impacts, thus weakening them before they reached the InSight lander. However, this event proved otherwise.
“We used to think the energy detected from the vast majority of seismic events was stuck traveling within the Martian crust,” said InSight team member Constantinos Charalambous of Imperial College London.
“This finding shows a deeper, faster path – call it a seismic highway – through the mantle, allowing quakes to reach more distant regions of the planet.”
This new evidence forces scientists to rethink their models of how seismic waves travel on Mars. If impact-generated waves can reach deeper into the mantle, it means that Mars’s internal structure may differ significantly from what was previously assumed.
AI and Mars impact crater detection
Tracking new impact craters on Mars has always been a labor-intensive task. Scientists rely on before-and-after images taken by MRO to detect changes on the planet’s surface.
In the past, this process required manually sifting through thousands of images, looking for telltale signs of fresh craters.
To accelerate this process, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed an AI-powered tool that can rapidly analyze images from MRO’s Context Camera.
This machine-learning algorithm scans tens of thousands of images in a matter of hours, identifying potential impact sites for further investigation.
“Done manually, this would be years of work,” said InSight team member Valentin Bickel of the University of Bern in Switzerland. “Using this tool, we went from tens of thousands of images to just a handful in a matter of days. It’s not quite as good as a human, but it’s super fast.”
The AI-assisted search focused on areas within 1,864 miles (3,000 km) of InSight’s location, looking for craters that formed while the lander’s seismometer was active. By comparing time-stamped images, scientists found 123 fresh craters.
Of these, 49 showed possible matches with marsquake data. After additional filtering, they identified the impact crater in Cerberus Fossae as the most likely source of a recorded seismic event.
Marsquakes vs. impacts
One of the biggest challenges in planetary seismology is differentiating between quakes caused by internal processes and those triggered by meteoroid strikes.
InSight’s data has helped scientists improve their ability to classify these events, but this new discovery suggests that some previous assumptions may need revision.
“We thought Cerberus Fossae produced lots of high-frequency seismic signals associated with internally generated quakes, but this suggests some of the activity does not originate there and could actually be from impacts instead,” Charalambous said.
This distinction is crucial for understanding Mars’s long-term geological evolution. If some seismic signals attributed to tectonic activity were actually caused by impacts, it could reshape interpretations of Mars’s internal dynamics.
AI’s role in space science
The success of AI in detecting impact craters is just one example of how machine learning is transforming Martian research and overall planetary science.
AI tools are now being used to identify landslides, dust devils, and other surface changes on Mars. Similar techniques have been applied to analyze images of the Moon, and they have revealed previously unnoticed craters and geological features.
“Now we have so many images from the Moon and Mars that the struggle is to process and analyze the data,” Bickel said. “We’ve finally arrived in the big data era of planetary science.”
As missions like NASA’s Perseverance rover and ESA’s ExoMars continue to gather vast amounts of data, AI will play an increasingly vital role in processing and interpreting these findings.
Scientists are now developing new machine-learning models that can automatically detect geological changes, allowing them to make discoveries faster than ever before.
Global effort behind InSight and MRO
NASA’s InSight mission was part of the agency’s Discovery Program, managed by the Marshall Space Flight Center.
Lockheed Martin Space designed and built the spacecraft, while numerous European institutions contributed to its scientific instruments.
France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), with other contributions from the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, and ETH Zurich.
Germany’s DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package, while Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología supplied temperature and wind sensors.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which played a crucial role in this discovery, is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The University of Arizona operated its high-resolution camera, HiRISE, while Malin Space Science Systems built and operates the Context Camera.
Crater discovery changes Mars analysis
The discovery of a fresh impact crater linked to seismic waves traveling through Mars’s mantle marks a significant advance in planetary science.
It not only challenges previous models but also highlights the importance of AI in accelerating discoveries.
As researchers continue to analyze InSight’s data, they will refine their understanding of how the Martian interior behaves.
With AI-driven tools improving the efficiency of crater detection and seismic analysis, future missions will be better equipped to unlock the secrets hidden beneath the Red Planet’s surface.
The papers are published in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL).
—–
Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.
Check us out on EarthSnap, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.
—–