InSight was the NASA mission that first detected marsquakes and used them to study Mars’s interior.
NASA’s Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport mission, known as InSight, landed on Mars on 26 November 2018. Its stationary lander operated in Elysium Planitia, near the planet’s equator. Unlike a rover, InSight stayed in one location and focused on geophysics.
Its main seismic instrument, SEIS, detected hundreds of marsquakes and other vibrations. Seismic waves travel differently through rock, so their arrival times and paths reveal internal boundaries. InSight data helped scientists estimate the thickness of Mars’s crust and the dimensions of its core.
InSight also carried a heat-flow probe called HP3 and used radio tracking to measure tiny changes in the planet’s rotation. HP3 was unable to reach its planned depth, but the overall mission still achieved major results about Mars’s geological structure. Dust covering its solar panels ended operations in December 2022.