NASA’s probe on Mars may feel the ground shake when rovers land in 2021

By Jonathan O’Callaghan

An example of the NASA Perseverance rover landing on Mars

NASA / JPL-Caltech

For the first time in history, a spacecraft landing on Mars can be “heard” in an unusual way – through the seismic waves it creates when it hits the planet’s surface.

The ears in this scenario are built into NASA’s InSight lander, which landed in a region called Elysium Planitia on Mars in 2018. Since then, the stationary lander has used instruments to study the geology of the planet, including a seismometer to detect seismic waves. and has found hundreds of known seismic events …