NASA lander makes first direct observations of another planet's core

The news is that seismic works just like on Earth.  And we can now watch it all for a long while.

Again, just like on Earth, we have a body of assumptions that are never questioned and here it is just too soon for the edges to show up.  they have on Earth of course and are just been ignored.

Our research is to assume the following and find and interpret evidence.

We truly need an alternative scanning method and tool to actually detect anything.  On the Earth ,all seismic tracks around the Earth through the upper shell, whatever that might be.  Now we again have a simiar core that has likely nothing to do with Iron.  All this because seismic does not pass through.  That is what is not said.

NASA lander makes first direct observations of another planet's core

By Michael Irving

April 25, 2023

An artist's illustration of a cutaway view of Mars, showing the paths of the two quakes traveling from their points of origin to the InSight lander through the planet's core

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Maryland

https://newatlas.com/space/mars-insight-first-direct-observations-core

The mission may be defunct, but NASA’s InSight Mars lander is still uncovering new things about the Red Planet. Scientists poring over data have now made the first direct observations of another planet’s core, finding that it’s not quite what we thought.

The InSight lander was sent to Mars to study the planet’s interior, mostly by way of marsquakes. As you may have guessed, these are seismic tremors similar to earthquakes on our home planet, but because Mars doesn’t have plate tectonics they’re generally much weaker. Nevertheless, they can provide some clear insights into the structure and composition of the different layers below the red surface. Contact with the probe was lost in December 2022, but there’s still much to be gleaned from the data it gathered during its tenure.

In the new study, NASA scientists have made direct observations of the Red Planet’s core, thanks to a pair of quakes that occurred on August 25 and September 18, 2021. These were the first events detected from the opposite side of the planet, meaning their seismic waves had to travel farther to reach the detector, passing through the core on the way.

Seismic waves travel at different speeds through different materials and structures, and the variations in the data that eventually reach the detector can carry an imprint of the whole journey. This can tell scientists a lot about the interior of a planet.

In this case, the detections allowed the team to deduce that the Martian core is smaller and denser than previously thought. And while it’s mostly made of liquid iron, about one fifth consists of elements like sulfur, oxygen, carbon and hydrogen.

“Determining the amount of these elements in a planetary core is important for understanding the conditions in our solar system when planets were forming and how these conditions affected the planets that formed,” said Doyeon Kim, co-author of the study.

InSight may have finished gathering data, but the existing data will likely continue to fuel new discoveries for decades, the team says.