NASA’s InSight mission was the first to study Mars’ interior using a seismometer on the planet’s surface.
InSight landed in Elysium Planitia on November 26, 2018. Unlike rovers designed mainly to travel across the surface, InSight was a stationary lander built to investigate Mars’ deep interior, including its crust, mantle, and core.
Its Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure detected marsquakes and meteorite impacts. Scientists used those vibrations to infer the planet’s internal layers. InSight also carried a heat-flow probe intended to measure heat escaping from the interior, although the probe could not dig as deeply as planned because of unexpected soil properties.
The mission ended in December 2022 after dust accumulated on its solar panels. InSight’s results provided the first direct seismic information about another planet besides Earth and helped refine models of how rocky planets form.