Imperial College London and Columbia University scientists report that Valles Marineris on Mars remains tectonically active billions of years after it formed, because a marsquake began beneath the canyon as rocks slipped on a deep fault. Tectonically active means the planet’s crust is still shifting and breaking.s
The study gives direct seismic evidence that faults born when Valles Marineris formed can still break under stresses acting on Mars today. It places Valles Marineris among the regions where InSight found active faulting on present-day Mars, together with Cerberus Fossae and southern Elysium Planitia.
The research appeared in Nature Communications and was led by Jung-Hun Song, Assistant Professor at Imperial College London’s Department of Earth Science and Engineering. Song said, “Our study opens up exciting possibilities for discovering ongoing seismic activity on other planetary bodies that we might otherwise consider geologically inactive.”
Collaborators came from Columbia University‘s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Department of Earth Science and Environmental Change. Columbia’s State of the Planet describes the article as adapted from an Imperial College London press release written by Gege Li.
NASA‘s InSight lander recorded marsquake S0976a on August 25th, 2021. A marsquake is a seismic event on Mars. The quake originated on the opposite side of Mars from the lander and was the only marsquake located in the planet’s western hemisphere during the mission.
Earlier work had placed S0976a near western Valles Marineris, but its cause was unclear. Candidates for the cause ranged from meteoroid impacts to landslides and other mass movement. State of the Planet adds that S0976a was unusual as the only mission marsquake locatable in the western hemisphere.
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