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CTOnews.com, April 25 (Xinhua)-- NASA's InSight Mars Landing probe ended its mission in December last year, but the data it left behind has given scientists unprecedented results.

The stratigraphic structure of Mars can be divided into three parts: the crust, the mantle and the core. By analyzing the two seismic waves recorded by the seismograph on Insight, scientists directly observed the core of Mars for the first time, revealing the structure and composition of the red planet.

This concept map shows the profile of Mars and the seismic wave paths of two different earthquakes in 2021, which occurred on August 25 and September 18, 2021, respectively, making them the largest earthquakes detected by the Insight probe. They all come from the other side of Mars, the so-called "far side". Such seismic waves are valuable for studying the Martian core because they can travel across the planet to reach the location of the Insight probe. By analyzing the reflection and refraction of these seismic waves in the Martian core, scientists can infer the size, density and composition of the Martian core.

According to a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists have come to a surprising conclusion: Mars' liquid iron core is smaller and denser than previously thought. Specifically, the radius of the Martian core is about 1830 kilometers, accounting for a little more than half of the entire radius of Mars (3398 kilometers CTOnews.com). There is a very high proportion of lighter elements in the Martian core, and about 1/5 of the weight is made up of these elements, mainly sulfur, and small amounts of oxygen, carbon and hydrogen, which make the Martian core lighter than pure iron.

This discovery is of great significance for understanding the formation and evolution of planets in the solar system. Mars is an earth-like planet, which has a similar internal structure to the earth and the moon, but has a different history. By comparing the core characteristics of different planets, scientists can infer the environment and conditions of the early solar system, as well as the factors that influenced the process of planet formation.

Insight, the first mission launched by NASA to study the deep internal structure and properties of Mars, landed on the surface of Mars in November 2018 and deployed a highly sensitive seismograph and a heat flow probe. It provides us with valuable information about the Martian crust, mantle, core and other aspects, giving us a deeper understanding of this mysterious and distant neighbor.

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