U010-05
Listening for a Landing: the seismic detectability of Mars 2020’s arrival by the InSight lander
Thursday, 10 December 2020: 05:47
Benjamin Fernando1, Ingrid Daubar2, Natalia Wojcicka3, Marouchka Froment4, Ross Maguire5, Carene S Larmat6, Foivos Georgios Karakostas7, Lucie Rolland8, Nicholas A Teanby9, Gareth S Collins10, Ozgur Karatekin11, Aymeric Spiga12, Kuangdai Leng1,13, Philippe Henri Lognonné14 and W Bruce Banerdt15, (1)University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, (2)Univ of AZ-Planetary Sciences, Tucson, AZ, United States, (3)Imperial College London, London, SW7, United Kingdom, (4)Ecole Normale Supérieure Cachan, Cachan, France, (5)University of New Mexico Main Campus, Albuquerque, NM, United States, (6)Los Alamos National Laboratory, EES-17, Los Alamos, NM, United States, (7)Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, Paris, France, (8)GeoAzur, Valbonne, France, (9)University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom, (10)Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom, (11)Royal Observatory of Belgium, Brussels, Belgium, (12)LMD/IPSL, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France - Institut Universitaire de France, France, Palaiseau Cedex, France, (13)University of Oxford, Department of Earth Sciences, Oxford, United Kingdom, (14)Université de Paris, Institut de physique du globe de Paris, CNRS, Paris, France, (15)NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States
Abstract:
NASA’s InSight spacecraft landed on Mars in 2018 and has since then detected numerous marsquakes. However, it has yet to unambiguously detect the seismic signature of a meteorite impact event; despite these being expected in pre-landing estimates to make up a substantial part of the seismicity budget.
The Mars 2020 Rover’s Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) sequence will act as a seismic source with a prioriknown location, timing, and dimensions. The detection of these signals by InSight would be of enormous value in investigations of Mars’ interior using seismology.
This problem is seismically complex, involving coupling of seismic waves from the atmosphere into the ground; and non-linear hydrodynamic modelling of masses impacting the ground. Many of these techniques are not dissimilar to those considered in the contexts of ocean seismology.
We will consider both the atmospheric acoustic signal caused by the re-entry shockwave, and the solid-domain signal caused by planned hardware impacts. This will be done for a range of potential landing scenarios.
The possible seismic signature of the Chinese Tianwen-1 lander’s EDL will also be considered.
