Quakes on Mars Reveal New Features of the Planet’s Interior: Solid Core & Ancient Impact Blobs Uncovere

Discover how Marsquakes recorded by NASA’s Insight lander uncovered a solid inner core and dense ancient fragments within Mars’ mantle—offering a unique window into planetary formation and evolution.

Quakes on Mars Reveal New Features of the Planet’s Interior

Mars continues to surprise us. Recent seismic studies—powered by data from NASA’s InSight lander—have illuminated previously hidden features of the Red Planet’s interior. From a solid inner core akin to Earth’s, to mysterious dense “blobs” within its mantle, these findings are reshaping our understanding of Martian geology. InSight’s seismic snapshots are painting a clearer, more nuanced portrait of Mars’ internal structure—offering clues into planetary formation, magnetic evolution, and Solar System history.

Insight: Mars’ First Seismic Storyteller 

Launched in 2018, NASA’s InSight lander deployed the SEIS seismometer on Mars in December of that year, operating until December 2022. Despite solar panel failure ending its mission, InSight recorded over 1,300 marsquakes, offering unprecedented seismic data from the Martian subsurface (AP News, Wikipedia).

These marsquakes, triggered by fracturing crustal rocks or meteoroid impacts rather than plate tectonics, transmitted seismic waves deep into Mars—serving like acoustic “X-rays” that revealed internal layers (NASA, Wikipedia, ScienceAlert).

A Solid Inner Core — Just Like Earth’s

A groundbreaking discovery surfaced recently: Mars possesses a solid inner core, similar to Earth’s. This core extends approximately 380 miles (~613 km) from the center, surrounded by a liquid outer core stretching out to nearly 1,100 miles (~1,800 km) (AP News, Nature, Phys.org).

Previously, scientists hypothesized Mars’ core might be fully liquid. But seismic wave analysis from 23 specific marsquakes, recorded by InSight between 740 and 1,465 miles away, indicates a stratified core not unlike Earth’s (AP News, Phys.org). The comparison is compelling: Mars’ inner core makes up roughly one-fifth of its radius—proportionally similar to Earth’s (AP News, The Times of India).

While confirming this resemblance, researchers urge caution: defining the exact shape and composition of the core requires more seismic stations across Mars—InSight was a single node (AP News).

Preserved Martian “Blobs”: Ancient Chunks of Protoplanets

In a second revelation, scientists discovered dozens of dense structures—nicknamed “blobs”—embedded within Mars’ solid mantle. Some are as large as 2.5 miles (4 km) across. These are potentially remnants of early protoplanetary bodies, deposited during the chaotic early Solar System ~4.5 billion years ago (Live Science, The Times of India).

Mars’ static mantle—unlike Earth’s ever-churning lithosphere—has retained these lumps intact, creating a fossilized record of past impacts (Live Science, Space). The blobs were detected because particular marsquake signals slowed down and scrambled as they passed through these denser regions (NASA, Sky at Night Magazine, The Debrief).

Lead author Constantinos Charalambous likened the pattern to shattered glass: large shards and smaller fragments scattered deep in the mantle by impact-generated magma oceans, later preserved under a “stagnant lid” of cooled surface (Space, The Debrief).

Martian Seismology: A Window into Planetary Evolution

Together, these findings transform Mars into a time capsule—a planet whose interior bears intact records of solar system formation. Its solid inner core and ancient impact fragments reveal a now-dormant dynamo that once powered a magnetic field, and a geologically sluggish interior that preserved primordial structures (AP News, Live Science, Wikipedia).

Such insights offer broader implications for how terrestrial planets evolve—especially those lacking tectonic activity, like Venus and Mercury (NASA, Wikipedia). Understanding Mars’ interior could enhance our knowledge of planetary differentiation, core crystallization, and magnetic field shutdown in terrestrial worlds.

Looking Ahead: What’s Next for Martian Exploration?

With InSight now inactive, future seismic exploration on Mars hinges on deploying multiple seismic stations to triangulate quake sources, improve interior mapping, and confirm core models (AP News).

New missions—possibly contributed by international space agencies—could place rovers or landers with upgraded seismometers across different Martian regions, shedding light on crust-mantle interactions and regional seismic anisotropy (arXiv, EarthSky, Wikipedia).

Such efforts could unravel the timeline of Mars’ magnetic field decay, interior thermal evolution, and its ability to support subsurface reservoirs of water—key to understanding habitability across the red planet’s past and future.

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