QUAKES THROUGH THE SOLAR SYSTEM 1969-2018

InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport) is a NASA Discovery Program mission, slated for a March 2016 launch date, which will place a single geophysical lander on Mars to study its deep interior. The seismological data, expected to be available within 2 weeks of being recorded, will be made available to classrooms through an Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) free cross-platform software package jAmaSeis as soon as it arrives from Mars. jAmaSeis is now available to stream continuous data from up to three seismic stations on Earth stored in the IRIS Data Management Center (DMC). jAmaseis was designed to work with school firewalls and proxy servers to allow classrooms to monitor seismic activity on Earth, review seismicity from the Moon, and soon to be able to monitor seismic activity on Mars.

To prepare for this Martian landing and the near real-time availability of data, IRIS is looking back to the NASA Apollo missions which put the first seismometer on the moon’s surface in 1969. The Apollo 11 seismometer returned data for three weeks, and was followed by seismometers deployed by Apollo 12, 14, 15, 16. These instruments transmitted data to Earth until 1977. The data from these missions is held at the IRIS DMC, and will be used to test of capability of the jAmaSeis software to stream delayed mission data in a continuous fashion and as the basis for comparative planetology curriculum which will take students from the Earth to the Moon as we prepare for this new mission, and then on to Mars in 2016.

Our curriculum will allow students to understand the types and causes of seismicity in the solar system, locate earthquakes, moonquakes, and marsquakes, and explore and compare the structure of the Earth, Moon, and Mars. Data from the historical Apollo mission allows widespread use of these data to students as they take their first steps away from Earth-only seismic data. With near real-time access to Martian seismic data in the near future, students will be able to work with the data at the same time scientists are pursuing their goals for this mission, providing glimpses into the evolutionary processes of the rocky planets in the inner solar system.