Forward Modeling of the Phobos Tides and Applications to the First Martian Year of the InSight Mission

Abstract

The tidal response of Mars, due to the Sun and the Martian moons, Phobos and Deimos, provides information about the interior structure of Mars. By using the VBB seismometer of SEIS as a gravimeter on the surface of Mars, the InSight mission will provide long-period data suited to tidal analysis: most notably, the proximity of Phobos implies that degree 2, 3, 4 and further tides will be detectable by the VBB and are expected to provide information about the rheology at different depths within Mars. In order to expedite the recovery of these tidal signals in the SEIS measurements, we model the tides raised by Phobos using a tidal potential deduced from JPL Horizons ephemerides. From this potential, we calculate the expected tidal acceleration at InSight's location and gravimetric factors using a set of plausible interior models of Mars. To simulate the expected long period signal on the VBB seismometer, we use the InSight APSS data to model the noise seen at low frequency by SEIS mainly due to temperature and pressure variations. Based on this synthetic signal, by applying filtering methods such as stacking and matched filtering to these synthetic data, we show that by recovering the gravimetric factors, it should be possible to constrain the state of the core and its size with an accuracy of 125 km after 2 Earth years.

Mars Seismology

“…Future work will improve interior models, search for hidden seismic or infrasound events (Garcia et al 2021, Ortiz et al 2022, particularly with machine learning (Dahmen et al, 2022, Stott et al, 2022 and search for phases or long period signals not yet confirmed, including PKP phases (Irving et al 2022), surface wave overtones (Xu et al 2020), normal modes (Lognonné et al 2022) and tides (Pou et al 2021). As has been seen for the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment (Bates et al 1979), we can expect decades of scientific analysis with SEIS and InSight data.…”