Geophysical Research Letters: Autocorrelation Reflectivity of Mars

Sizhuang Deng and Alan Levander

Abstract

The seismic structure of the Martian interior can shed light on the formation and dynamic evolution of the planet and our solar system. The deployment of the seismograph carried by the InSight mission provides a means to study Martian internal structure. We used ambient noise autocorrelation to analyze the available vertical component seismic data to recover the reflectivity beneath the Insight lander. We identify the noise that is approximately periodic with the Martian sol as daily lander operations and the diurnal variation in Martian weather and tides. To investigate the seismic discontinuities at different depths, the autocorrelograms are filtered and stacked into different frequency bands. We observe prominent reflection signals probably corresponding to the Martian Moho, the olivine‐wadsleyite transition in the mantle, and the core‐mantle boundary in the stacked autocorrelograms. We estimate the depths of these boundaries as ~35, 1,110–1,170, and 1,520–1,600 km, consistent with other estimates.

https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL089630