DIAS’ School of Cosmic Physics is pleased to present their Statutory Public Lecture for 2020, delivered by Dr John Clinton of ETH Zürich.

NASA’s InSight Mission landed on Mars in November 2018. Weeks later, a robot arm on the geophysical observatory deployed SEIS on the surface of the planet, becoming the first seismometer to successfully operate on a body outside our Earth since the Apollo Lunar missions in the 1970’s. On Earth, we have accumulated so much of our knowledge about the internal structure of our home planet through 150 years of seismic monitoring. SEIS allows us to begin a similar illumination of our neighbour. Two Earth years into the mission, we have just reached the initial mission target of recording an entire Martian year of data – but as the spacecraft remains healthy, we hope to continue monitoring well into the next decade. Within the mission, Dr John Clinton is leading the Marsquake Service that is tasked with finding and locating marsquakes. After a very slow start, we began seeing regular seismic activity and have confirmed for the first time that Mars is indeed seismically active!

In this presentation, Dr Clinton will provide an overview of the science payload on the spacecraft and describe the complex operations of placing a seismometer on the surface of the planet. Dr Clinton will also describe the key features of the 100’s of marsquakes we have observed, and present our growing understanding of the Martian interior.

• This will be presented online via Zoom  on 19th November from 6.30pm.
• Tickets are free but booking is essential. 
• The link to the event will issue to those who have registered email  on the day of the event, first two hours before and again 10 minutes before. Be advised the link comes from Eventbrite.
• NOTE: This event will be recorded.