What is a ‘marsquake’ and why does it happen?

Context

NASA's InSight lander has recently detected a quake on Mars, the largest ever observed on another planet.

What is a Marsquake?

• The InSight rover first landed on Mars in November 2018, and has since heard 1,313 quakes.
• A magnitude 5 quake shook the surface of Mars, the strongest temblor ever detected not only on Mars but on any planet besides Earth.
• The marsquake surpassed the previous record-holder, a 4.2-magnitude quake that took place in August 2021.
• On Earth, quakes are caused by shifts in tectonic plates. Mars, however, does not have tectonic plates, and its crust is a giant plate. 
• Therefore, NASA notes, ‘marsquakes’ are caused due to stresses that cause rock fractures or faults in its crust.

NASA’s InSight Rover

• The Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport mission is a robotic lander designed to study the deep interior of the planet Mars.
• Launched in 2018, InSight is studying what Mars is made of, how its material is layered, and how much heat seeps out of it.
• With InSight, scientists hope to compare Earth and Mars, and better understand how a planet’s starting materials make it more or less likely to support life.
• There are other missions to Mars that are looking for life on the planet, which makes Insight’s mandate unique. 

Other missions on Mars

• Some missions studying the possibility of life on Mars include UAE’s Hope, China’s Tianwen-1, and NASA’s Perseverance.
• India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also called Mangalyaan, launched by ISRO is a space probe orbiting Mars since 24 September 2014. 
• It is India’s first interplanetary mission and it made it the fourth space agency to achieve Mars orbit, after Roscosmos, NASA, and the European Space Agency.