World-renowned researcher Professor Scott D. King from Virgnia Polytechnic Institute will coming to UTSC to talk about his recent work on NASA’s InSight spacecraft that was operated on the surface of Mars and analyzing its deep interior. See the full abstract below.
The talk will be hosted by the Centre for Research in Earth System Science (CRESS) at UTSC as a continuation of the monthly CRESS Events from previous years. It will take place on Wednesday September 27th at 4pm in IC318. Light refreshments will be provided.
What’s Shakin’ on Mars?
The NASA InSight spacecraft operated on the surface of Mars for four Earth years focusing on the exploration of the deep interior of the planet. The three core experiments from the mission were:
- SEIS (Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure), a six-sensor, broad-band seismic instrument;
- HP3 (Heat flow and Physical Properties Package), a probe intended to measure the ground temperature/gradient, thermal conductivity, and mechanical properties from the surface to 5 m depth; and
- RISE (Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment), a geodetic planetary rotation investigation tracking the location of the spacecraft to sub-decimeter-scale precision.
SEIS detected more than 1,000 seismic and impact events and the science team has used this data to constrain the structure of the crust and the depth to the iron core. The HP3 probe encountered difficulty and did not yet reach the target 5-meter depth, yet was able to measure the thermal conductivity. In this talk I will highlight some key results from the mission and describe the challenges of doing planetary geophysics robotically on another planet.