Mars Shocking Discovery: NASA Detects First 'Marsquake' On Red Planet

The first-ever "marsquake" on planet Mars may have just been detected by scientists.

NASA's InSight — Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport — lander has been listening for tremors on Mars for months now with the use of a seismometer, which was developed by the French government agency National Centre for Space Studies. And on April 6, InSight finally felt its first confirmed marsquake on Martian soil.

"We've been waiting months for our first marsquake," Philippe Lognonné, the principal investigator for the seismometer instrument, said in a statement. "It's so exciting to finally have proof that Mars is still seismically active."

The rumble had been subtle, but scientists believe it to be a marsquake rather than a disturbance caused by wind or other environmental conditions.

This is because the signals picked up by the InSight Lander on Mars coincided with those of the moonquakes previously measured by Apollo missions.

"InSight's first readings carry on the science that began with the Apollo missions," Bruce Banerdt, a geophysicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and principal investigator on the InSight mission, said in the same statement. "We've been collecting background noise up until now, but this first event officially kicks off a new field: Martian seismology."

Unlike Earth, Mars doesn't have the tectonic plates that cause our earthquakes. Instead, scientists believe the Red Planet's marsquakes may be triggered by "stress caused by the slow cooling of the body," causing energy to ripple through Mars' interior.

But while scientists are excited over the first-ever marsquake, this detection didn't really contribute to the InSight team's ultimate goal, which is to analyze Mars' interior structure. The tremor had not been strong enough to provide data they need for that analysis.

Meanwhile, NASA may have just taken one step closer to their future goal of sending people to Mars with the completion of a groundbreaking study published in the journal Science this month.

From data obtained from twin astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly while one was aboard the International Space Station and the other on Earth, scientists gained a better understanding of the long-term effects of space on the human body. According to NASA, the "Twins Study" revealed that spending a year in space has considerable impacts on the body, but not enough to be considered life-threatening.

This could mean that the long journey to Mars would not be detrimental to the astronauts who will attempt to colonize the Red Planet.