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Space

Marsquakes happen more often during the planet’s northern summer

The NASA Insight lander has measured the frequency of shallow marsquakes and found they are more common when it is summer in Mars’s northern hemisphere

By Joshua Rapp Learn

9 November 2021

An artist's depiction of the InSight lander on Mars.

Artist’s depiction of the InSight lander on Mars

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Quakes aren’t unique to Earth – a lander has detected more than 700 of them on Mars. And new research shows that some of them may occur seasonally.

The NASA InSight lander, which touched down on the Red Planet in November 2018, brought seismometers and placed them on the surface using a robotic arm. These instruments have been gathering information since shortly after the landing.

“It’s really cool that we’re finding so many marsquakes, and there’s so much about this planet that we’re still finding out,” says …

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