The core of Mars is comparable in size to the moon but nearly twice as dense. On April 24, researchers reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they had detected the initial tremors of a Marsquake and a meteorite strike across the Red Planet's centre. Researchers were able to fine-tune their estimates of the core's size, density, and composition thanks to the penetrating reverberations (SN: 7/22/21).
Jessica Irving, a seismologist from the University of Bristol in England, claims that "nobody's ever seen before" a seismic wave travelling through [Mars'] core. She explains that they had to wait over a thousand days for a single earthquake on the other side. Then "a meteorite impact occurred 24 days later."
NASA's InSight lander captured both, and it will continue to track seismic activity on Mars for another four years, until December 2022 (SN: 12/20/22). More than a thousand Marsquakes and a few impacts were recorded by the lander over its 1,480-day mission (SN: 11/3/22). However, throughout that time period, it picked up only two rumblings on the other side of the earth.
Using data from both events, Irving and her coworkers calculated that Mars's core had a radius of between 1,780 and 1,810 kilometres and a density of around 6,200 kilogrammes per cubic metre. This radius is nearly half as large as all the layers in Earth's core, and it is less than prior estimates (SN: 3/16/23). Roughly half of the planetary thickness can be attributed to the cores of both planets.
In addition, the scientists deduced that around 15% of Mars' bulk is composed of sulphur, making up part of its core's liquid iron alloy composition. About 5% of the total is made up of trace amounts of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon. The results are consistent, to a certain extent, with other studies of Martian meteorite compositions.
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