MarsQuakes and Human Colonization

© P. Ingish April, 2009

The closing scenes of TV's Life on Mars finale depicted a barren dusty-looking red planet with mountainous formations at the ends of long desert reaches. At night, it was colder than the Kalahari and more bleak.

Can people live on the face of Mars under climate-control domes in future cities? Can we establish a climate with atmosphere-attracting plants, trees, and water beneath the domes like giant terrariums and open them all at once after we cover the planet with them?

Before all that, does Mars experience tectonic activity that results in volcanic eruptions and marsquakes in the 21st Century? These events would affect human colonization attempts beginning around 2020. 

As late as the 1998, a portion of involved researchers felt that their studies showed no evidence of tectonic activity or even tectonic plates under the surface of Mars. However, NASA found evidence of tectonic history in 1999 (see reference 2. below).

Prior to 1999, Viking 2 on Mars radioed back to Earth the recording of a single possibly seismic event via its seismometer before end of transmissions on April 11, 1980 (NASA, 1980). This had paved the way for researching the history of land quakes and possible current or even ongoing seismic activity on Mars.

Studies in 2005 - 2008 offered a second and third opinions such as these --

1. Golombek, M.; Phillips, R. Mars Tectonics. American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008. December 2008. [Golombek and Philips have been affiliated with Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, Pasadena, CA and Southwest Research Institute in Boulder Colorado.] -- Martian tectonics centers on the Tharsis string of volcanoes and related tectonic ridge. Certain formations indicate a moat formed around volcanic activity, which may have released water and magma in a layer reaching to 100 m thick above the surface of Mars.
2. NASA. Plate Tectonics on Mars. "Magnetic Stripe" Evidence of Plate Tectonics On Mars. NASA News; October 12, 2005. - .A map of the magnetic field around Mars was constructed by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft’s magnetometer and examined by NASA personnel. They had first discovered evidence of Martian plate tectonics in the Southern Hemisphere in 1999. However, the newer map is based on 4 years of accumulated mapping data over the entire face of the planet. Magnetic striping is evidenced several places around the planet, as are a kind of seismic faults (Transform type that indicate tectonic shifts). Scientists found magnetic stripes pointing in different magnetic directions, which indicates tectonic movement. Earth has this same type of alternating striping. Tectonics are thus indicated by: a) a magnetic pattern, b) the Tharsis volcanoes arrangement in a straight line – a fault line, and c) the Valles Marineris canyon as long as six Grand Canyons and much deeper, looks physically and magnetically (by orientation) like tectonic activity opened it.

It is believed that tectonic activity may be only in the past of Mars, not to occur in future, However, this status might change as scentific examination progresses. With evidence in the 2000s suggesting the possible existence of methane gas, bacteria, and water on Mars, there are always possibilities.

Robert Roy Britt. Marsquakes: Red Planet May Still Rumble. Space.com. October 11, 2004. -- David Farrell of the Southwest Research Insitute mention above at University of Texas found from Mars images that the planet's surface has chains of pits in rows that might be sinkholes that occur when tunnels are created by running water or lava tubes when hot magma carves tunnels.

The pit chains in Iceland were formed on a fault line beginning only in 1975. Erosion, in a way, widened these pit structures and chains resulted. Comparing examination of martian and Terran data, it looks as through the pits on Mars were formed in the same manner as those of Iceland. Mars' lower gravity results in steeper fault features that reach farther down into the planet's crust than is found on earth. This makes larger pitted areas. One item is interesting: the lack of sediment at the bottom of the pits might mean that the pits are fairly new, so tectonic activity might be occurring in the 21st Century.

2006 - 2009

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) is the latest imaging project above the Martian surface. HiRISE has captured images of avalanches at the north polar ice cap as they have happened and imagery evidence suggests that these avalanches may have been caused by seismic activity. However, it is widely thought that the Martian core is solid and therefore, does not provide the potential for seismic activity, Others rsearchers think that seismic activity may occur in the crust of Mars alone (Knapmeyer, M., Oberst, J., Spohn, T. Of Moonquakes and Marsquakes. Final Colloquium DFG Schwerpunkt 1115, Münster (Germany), 02/28 - 02/29/2008). However, the scientists in this last reference predict 20-30 Marsquakes per year through the use of a system of statistical models.

As of mid-2009, researchers and members of the Mars Society feel that Mars may or may not experience quakes. If there are quakes. there may be 20 - 30 per year.

Opinions are summarized roughly as follows -- If Mars provides seismic activity, it is probably seismic activity at lower levels than on Earth and less widespread across the planet.

The highest risk of seismic activity and with it, quakes and volcanic activity, may be at the Martian North Pole, so it would be wise that settlers not build colonies in this reagion, except perhaps for a research station or two, similar to those Earth possesses in Antarctica.

It would be wise planning to continue to collect imagery and seismic data from Mars and use it to create a seismic map before venturing forward to colonize the planet.

Given enough data over time, we can create a Martian equivalent of the daily seismic activity portal available on Earth at the link below.

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