'Shakes' detected on planet that NASA believes has life

Before being shut down by a "dust devil", NASA's InSight robot made a "lifetime" discovery on Earth's neighboring planet .

A study recently published in NASA's journal Geophysical Research looked at the strongest earthquake ever recorded in the four years that InSight, NASA's Mars lander, has been operating as a robotic seismic probe.

It was a magnitude 4.7 earthquake (US Moment scale), which is equivalent to many medium-sized earthquakes on Earth , enough to make houses shake.

NASA's InSight Warrior - (Photo: NASA).

That may seem normal on Earth, but it's highly unusual on another planet, which was once thought to have a solid crust and be geologically inactive.

According to Science Alert, this data has provided estimates of the thickness of Mars' global crust, as well as how the planet generates heat from within.

"Since this earthquake, we have observed surface waves surrounding Mars three times," said seismologist Doyeon Kim from the Institute of Geophysics of ETH Zurich (Switzerland).

Combining data on previous earthquakes, gravity data and Martian topography, they estimated the average thickness of the planet's global crust to be between 42 and 56 kilometers, much thicker than the Earth's crust (average 24 kilometers) or the Moon's (34 to 43 kilometers).

The thinnest part of the Martian crust is about 20km, in the Hellas impact basin, while the thickest part is up to 90km, in the Tharsis volcanic plateau. The crust in the southern hemisphere extends farther down than in the northern hemisphere, helping scientists figure out how the planet's crust evolved.

Several radioactive elements that decay heat are also found in abundance in both the crust and mantle, including uranium, thorium, and potassium, accounting for localized melts in the interior of Mars.

These factors contribute to an important finding: Mars may still be geologically active today.

Geological activity is an extremely important factor for life on a planet, because it helps stabilize the environment and climate, providing the chemical exchanges necessary for the planet's cycles to trigger the reactions that give rise to initial life and nurture that life.

Mars is the planet NASA is most focused on in its life-hunting mission series, with multiple robots searching for evidence of ancient life — or, with luck, something present or close to present — like Curiosity or Perseverance.

The new discovery gives them great hope.