Mondo Knows Facts
InSight measured Mars quakes and sized its core
The lander's seismometer revealed a large partly molten iron core NASA's InSight lander sat in Elysium Planitia from 2018 to 2022 and recorded more than 1,300 marsquakes with a seismometer shielded from wind. How the seismic waves travelled showed a core of liquid iron and sulphur with a radius near 1,830 kilometres. Dust eventually buried its solar panels and ended the mission. It sits in Mondo's space collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Tags: insight, marsquakes, seismology
InSight measured Mars quakes and sized its core: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- The lander's seismometer revealed a large partly molten iron core. The figure is taken from NASA Science, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a space fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Space shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.