Newly formed craters on Mars located using seismic and acoustic wave data from InSight

Raphael Garcia (1) , Ingrid Daubar (2) , Éric Beucler (3) , Liliya Posiolova (4) , Gareth Collins (5) , Philippe Lognonné (6) , Lucie Rolland (7) , Zongbo Xu (8) , Natalia Wójcicka (5) , Aymeric Spiga (9) , Benjamin Fernando (10) , Gunnar Speth (4) , Léo Martire (6) , Andrea Rajšić (11) , Katarina Miljković (12) , Eleanor Sansom (11) , Constantinos Charalambous (13) , Savas Ceylan , Sabrina Menina (8) , Ludovic Margerin (14) , Rémi Lapeyre (15) , Tanja Neidhart (11) , Nicholas Teanby (16) , Nicholas Schmerr (17) , Mickaël Bonnin (3) , Marouchka Froment (18, 8) , John Clinton , Ozgur Karatekin (19) , Simon Stähler (20) , Nikolaj Dahmen (20) , Cecilia Durán (20) , Anna Horleston (16) , Taichi Kawamura , Matthieu Plasman (8) , Géraldine Zenhäusern (21) , Domenico Giardini (22) , Mark Panning (23) , Mike Malin (4, 8) , William Bruce Banerdt (24)

1 ISAE-SUPAERO - Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace
2 Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences [Providence]
3 LPG - Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géosciences [UMR_C 6112]
4 MSSS - Malin Space Science Systems
5 Department of Earth Science and Engineering [Imperial College London]
6 IPGP - Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris
7 GEOAZUR 7329 - Géoazur
8 IPGP (UMR_7154) - Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris
9 LMD - Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (UMR 8539)
10 Department of Earth Sciences [Oxford]
11 Curtin University
12 IPGP-UAR / UAR3454 - UAR-Institut de physique du globe de Paris
13 DEEE - Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering [London]
14 IRAP - Institut de recherche en astrophysique et planétologie
15 CNES - Centre National d'Études Spatiales [Toulouse]
16 School of Earth Sciences [Bristol]
17 University of Maryland [College Park]
18 Earth and Environmental Sciences Division [Los Alamos]
19 ROB - Royal Observatory of Belgium = Observatoire Royal de Belgique
20 Institute of Geophysics [ETH Zürich]
21 D-ERDW - Department of Earth Sciences [Swiss Federal Institute of Technology - ETH Zürich]
22 Institut für Geophysik [Zürich]
23 CALTECH - California Institute of Technology
24 JPL - Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Meteoroid impacts shape planetary surfaces by forming new craters and alter atmospheric composition. During atmospheric entry and impact on the ground, meteoroids excite transient acoustic and seismic waves. However, new crater formation and the associated impact-induced mechanical waves have yet to be observed jointly beyond Earth. Here we report observations of seismic and acoustic waves from the NASA InSight lander’s seismometer that we link to four meteoroid impact events on Mars observed in spacecraft imagery. We analysed arrival times and polarization of seismic and acoustic waves to estimate impact locations, which were subsequently confirmed by orbital imaging of the associated craters. Crater dimensions and estimates of meteoroid trajectories are consistent with waveform modelling of the recorded seismograms. With identified seismic sources, the seismic waves can be used to constrain the structure of the Martian interior, corroborating previous crustal structure models, and constrain scaling relationships between the distance and amplitude of impact-generated seismic waves on Mars, supporting a link between the seismic moment of impacts and the vertical impactor momentum. Our findings demonstrate the capability of planetary seismology to identify impact-generated seismic sources and constrain both impact processes and planetary interiors.

Mots clés: Inner planets; Meteoritics; Natural hazards; Seismology

Domaines: Planète et Univers [physics]

Raphael Garcia, Ingrid Daubar, Éric Beucler, Liliya Posiolova, Gareth Collins, et al.. Newly formed craters on Mars located using seismic and acoustic wave data from InSight. Nature Geoscience, 2022, 15 (10), pp.774-780. ⟨10.1038/s41561-022-01014-0⟩. ⟨hal-03945839⟩