Researchers reveal source of largest ever Mars quake

The event caused vibrations to reverberate through the planet for at least six hours.
InSight’s seismometer recorded the event on Mars’ surface in 2022 (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Nina Massey17 October 2023

Researchers have revealed the possible cause of the largest ever Mars quake.

A global team of scientists, led by the University of Oxford, suggest the 4.7 magnitude quake was not the result of meteorite hitting the planet, and was instead caused by enormous tectonic forces within Mars’ crust.

The event caused vibrations to reverberate through the planet for at least six hours, and was recorded by Nasa’s InSight lander on May 4 2022.

The event, dubbed S1222a, was similar to previous quakes known to be caused by meteoroid impacts, and led to an international search for a fresh crater.

We still think that Mars doesn’t have any active plate tectonics today, so this event was likely caused by the release of stress within Mars’ crust

Dr Benjamin Fernando

Although Mars is smaller than Earth, the two planets have similar land surface areas because Mars has no oceans.

In order to survey the huge amount of ground – 144 million km2 – study lead Dr Benjamin Fernando of the University of Oxford worked with the European Space Agency, the Chinese National Space Agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation, and the United Arab Emirates Space Agency.

This is thought to be the first time that all missions in orbit around Mars have collaborated on a single project.

Each team used data from their satellites orbiting Mars to look for a new crater, or any other tell-tale signature of an impact, like a dust cloud appearing in the hours after the quake.

However, after several months of searching, the researchers have announced that no fresh crater was found.

Dr Fernando said: “We still think that Mars doesn’t have any active plate tectonics today, so this event was likely caused by the release of stress within Mars’ crust.

“These stresses are the result of billions of years of evolution; including the cooling and shrinking of different parts of the planet at different rates.

“We still do not fully understand why some parts of the planet seem to have higher stresses than others, but results like these help us to investigate further.

“One day, this information may help us to understand where it would be safe for humans to live on Mars and where you might want to avoid.”

He added: “This project represents a huge international effort to help solve the mystery of S1222a, and I am incredibly grateful to all the missions who contributed.

“I hope this project serves as a template for productive international collaborations in deep space.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in