NASA’s InSight mission on Mars—first glimpses of the planet’s interior from seismology

摘要

Unlike all previous Mars missions, which explored the geology, chemistry, and atmosphere of the red planet in great detail, the Interior exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission is focused on the interior structure and processes of Mars. It is high time to address these topics as our knowledge of the Martian interior—or, in fact, that of any other terrestrial planet—is poorer than our knowledge for the Earth was 100 years ago. While it is generally assumed that differentiation processes early in the formation of terrestrial planets lead to a subdivision into a brittle rocky crust, a silicate mantle, and an iron-rich core1, the finer details are widely uncertain for Mars. This lack of knowledge hampers our understanding of its geodynamic history, and the formation and evolution of terrestrial planets in general. The three experiments carried out by InSight, and specifically the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), are about to change this.