NASA published a statement on August 28 where it reveals a
surprising investigation of what is under the Martian surface, we return to something important in the planets to be colonized, which is the crust, which is an important factor when it comes to obtaining resources and knowing where there is water.
On Earth the crust varies from 30 to 50 km thick, there are thicker zones like the Himalayas, for example, and then there are very weak zones, very weak, very thin, for example, the oceanic crust, there are points where it is only 5 km thick, but on average it would be 30 to 50 km.
The Martian crust is much thicker, ranging from 42 to 56 km and in some areas up to 125 km. This is because Mars is a smaller planet than Earth and has lost its internal heat more quickly. Although it does have internal heat and a hot core, which is quite hot and largely molten, there is debate as to whether it is totally or partially molten. We need to investigate further, as we do not know. Currently, the state of the Martian core is a mystery, but it has been calculated that it may be between 10,000 and 1,500°C, so Mars retains internal heat and could have volcanic activity at any time, although unfortunately I think the last time was about 10 million years ago. However, volcanic activity on Mars is much less frequent and earthquakes are also much weaker than on Earth.
The point is that, with such thickness, Mars retains several kilometers of water from its ancient oceans at a depth of several kilometers. And below the crust, in the mantle, which is not as fluid as the Earth's mantle, there would be a kind of ultra-dense paste of hot rock. What they have now discovered is that there are lumps in this paste, some up to 4 km in diameter, and these lumps are, curiously, the remains of one or more protoplanets that collided with Mars during the planet's formation period, about 4 million years ago, before oceans began to form on Mars.
These impacts released enough energy to melt swathes of Mars the size of a continent, melting the primitive crust and mantle and forming huge oceans of magma, simultaneously injecting fragments of the impactor and debris into the depths of the planet. There is currently no way to determine what impacted Mars, nor what these lumps beneath the surface are composed of, but they must be rock or metal or something very dense to be able to withstand the pressure and heat without completely fusing with the rest of the mantle.
This has been discovered thanks to the Insight probe, which was basically a seismometer that measured Martian earthquakes and recorded 1,319 Martianquakes, providing a kind of X-ray of the interior of Mars. 1,319 sounds like a lot, but don't worry, it wouldn't be a problem for a Martian base or a Martian colony.
Marsquakes, or earthquakes on Mars, are much weaker and less frequent than earthquakes on Earth. The strongest earthquake recorded by the Insight probe across the entire planet had a magnitude of 4.7 on the Richter scale and lasted from 2018 to 2023. Keep in mind that there are one or two earthquakes of magnitude seven or higher every year on Earth, and there are many more earthquakes of this magnitude, probably tens of thousands, with around four thousand every year on planet Earth. Therefore, earthquakes on Mars are few and far between, of low magnitude, and are usually caused by meteorite impacts.
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