Are marsquakes anything like earthquakes? NASA is about to find out.
A new spacecraft that's due to land soon on Mars will investigate why and how much the red planet rumbles.
On Earth, we call them earthquakes, and on the moon they’re called moonquakes. On Mars? They’d be marsquakes—except no one really knows how frequently the red planet jiggles and shakes, or how big those marsquakes can get.
But humans could soon find out just how much the fourth rock from the sun is rocking and rolling: NASA’s newest Mars-exploring spacecraft, called InSight, blasted off from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base on Saturday at 4:05 a.m. Pacific time, marking the first time an interplanetary probe has launched from the West Coast. The spacecraft has since been cruising through the solar system and is due to rendezvous with Mars around 3 p.m. ET on November 26.
Unlike many Mars missions that have
