On May 5, 2022, the seismometer on board the InSight lander recorded a quake of magnitude 4.7 on the Martian surface, despite the epicenter being 2,250 km from the lander. It was one of the largest quakes recorded on Mars and the largest recorded by the Insight mission. In September, in the first measurement of its kind, the instrument registered a quake generated by a meteorite impact on Mars.

InSight’s seismometer is called the Seismic Experiment for Internal Structure (or SEIS), and it has recorded these and 20 odd additional quakes. Now, an instrument based on the same design will measure ground vibrations on the far side of the Moon, the first seismographs on our neighbor since the Apollo era.

Down to SEIS

Developed by the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP) and the French space agency CNES, the SEIS Very Broad Band (VBB) seismometer that’s now on Mars can detect the tiniest movements—to the tune of 10 picometers, which is much smaller than an atom. Consisting of three pendulums placed at 120 degrees to each other, SEIS measures the vertical and horizontal vibrations of the Martian surface.