SEIS: Insight’s Seismic Experiment for Internal Structure of Mars

Abstract

By the end of 2018, 42 years after the landing of the two Viking seismometers on Mars, InSight will deploy onto Mars’ surface the SEIS ( S eismic E xperiment for I nternal S tructure) instrument; a six-axes seismometer equipped with both a long-period three-axes Very Broad Band (VBB) instrument and a three-axes short-period (SP) instrument. These six sensors will cover a broad range of the seismic bandwidth, from 0.01 Hz to 50 Hz, with possible extension to longer periods. Data will be transmitted in the form of three continuous VBB components at 2 sample per second (sps), an estimation of the short period energy content from the SP at 1 sps and a continuous compound VBB/SP vertical axis at 10 sps. The continuous streams will be augmented by requested event data with sample rates from 20 to 100 sps. SEIS will improve upon the existing resolution of Viking’s Mars seismic monitoring by a factor of at 1 Hz and at 0.1 Hz. An additional major improvement is that, contrary to Viking, the seismometers will be deployed via a robotic arm directly onto Mars’ surface and will be protected against temperature and wind by highly efficient thermal and wind shielding. Based on existing knowledge of Mars, it is reasonable to infer a moment magnitude detection threshold of at epicentral distance and a potential to detect several tens of quakes and about five impacts per year. In this paper, we first describe the science goals of the experiment and the rationale used to define its requirements. We then provide a detailed description of the hardware, from the sensors to the deployment system and associated performance, including transfer functions of the seismic sensors and temperature sensors. We conclude by describing the experiment ground segment, including data processing services, outreach and education networks and provide a description of the format to be used for future data distribution. Electronic Supplementary Material The online version of this article (10.1007/s11214-018-0574-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Monitoring of Dust Devil Tracks Around the InSight Landing Site, Mars, and Comparison With In Situ Atmospheric Data

“…The NASA InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) mission successfully landed in Elysium Planitia (Banerdt et al, ; Golombek et al, ), carrying the seismometer SEIS (Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure Lognonné et al, ) and meteorological instruments through the APSS experiment (Auxiliary Payload Sensor Suite; Banfield et al, ; Spiga et al, ). Results from APSS have shown intense atmospheric activity at the landing site.…”

On‐Deck Seismology: Lessons from InSight for Future Planetary Seismology

“…The InSight mission to Mars landed on 26 November 2018 (Banerdt et al, ). This geophysics mission was the first to deliver a seismometer (SEIS Lognonné et al, ) to the Martian surface since the Viking landers in the 1970s (e.g., Anderson et al, ; Lazarewicz et al, ; Lorenz, Nakamura, et al, ; Nakamura & Anderson, ). While both Viking landers included a seismometer mounted on their deck, only one managed to uncage, and initially, only one potential event with an internal origin was identified (Anderson et al, ).…”

Determining True North on Mars by Using a Sundial on InSight

“…with tan Ψ = tan D cos z, Ψ being the angle between the South meridian and the line of maximum slope of the plane. A can be compared to A by taking z = 0.1 • as a maximum deviation (the expected horizontality for the SEIS experiment (Lognonné et al, 2018)). The results are plotted on Figure 10 for a mean Sun declination of δ = −18.5 • and different azimuth from 0 • to 180 • every 45 • (South, South-West, West, North-West, values for East are symmetrical).…”

“…The space probe has among its instruments the seismometer SEIS (Seismic Experience for Interior Structure) (Lognonné et al, 2011), a single seismic station that will be deployed on a planet on which no model of seismic propagation waves has ever been made by previous missions. See Lognonné et al (2018) for a complete description of the SEIS experiment and Lognonné and Johnson (2015) for review on planetary seismology, including Mars.…”