The first two quakes on August 25 had strengths of 4.2 and 4.1, the US space agency Nasa announced on Wednesday. The longest and strongest earthquake measured by “InSight” so far happened on September 18 – it was 4.2 and lasted around an hour and a half.
The fact that the stationary lander, which arrived on Mars in 2018, was even able to measure the earthquakes is also due to a trick the NASA researchers used to ensure the energy supply for the seismometer developed and maintained by ETH Zurich: they scattered with a robotic arm of the lander Sand near a solar cell. When the wind blew it over the solar cell, it also took a large part of the dust deposited there with it – and the solar cell was able to continue to supply the lander with energy.