Modeling Seismic Recordings of High‐Frequency Guided Infrasound on Mars

Zongbo Xu (1) , Marouchka Froment (2, 1) , Raphaël Garcia (3) , Éric Beucler (4) , Keisuke Onodera , Taichi Kawamura , Philippe Lognonné (1) , William Bruce Banerdt (5)

1 IPGP (UMR_7154) - Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris
2 Earth and Environmental Sciences Division [Los Alamos]
3 ISAE-SUPAERO - Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace
4 LPG - Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géosciences [UMR_C 6112]
5 JPL - Jet Propulsion Laboratory

NASA’s InSight mission records several high-frequency (>0.5 Hz) dispersive seismic signals on Mars. These signals are due to the acoustic-to-seismic coupling of infrasound generated by the entry and impact of meteorites. This dispersion property is due to infrasound propagating in a structured atmosphere, and we refer to this dispersive infrasound as guided infrasound. We propose to model the propagation of guided infrasound and the seismic coupling to the ground analytically; we use a 1D layered atmosphere on a three-layer solid subsurface medium. The synthetic ground movements fit the observed dispersive seismic signals well and the fitting indicates the regolith beneath InSight is about 40-m in thickness. We also examine and validate the previously-published subsurface models derived from InSight ambient seismic vibration data.

Domaines: Géophysique [physics.geo-ph]; Planétologie

Zongbo Xu, Marouchka Froment, Raphaël Garcia, Éric Beucler, Keisuke Onodera, et al.. Modeling Seismic Recordings of High‐Frequency Guided Infrasound on Mars. Journal of Geophysical Research. Planets, 2022, 127 (11), pp.e2022JE007483. ⟨10.1029/2022JE007483⟩. ⟨hal-03918354⟩