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The new gravity field also allowed the team to confirm indications from previous gravity solutions that Mars has a liquid outer core of molten rock. As the Tharsis volcanoes grew, the surrounding lithosphere buckled under their immense weight. Tharsis is a volcanic plateau on Mars thousands of miles across with the largest volcanoes in the solar system. The new gravity map shows that some of these features run perpendicular to the local topography slope, against what would have been the natural downhill flow of water.Īn alternative explanation is that this anomaly may be a consequence of a flexure or bending of the lithosphere - the strong, outermost layer of the planet - due to the formation of the Tharsis region. This system of gravity troughs is unlikely to be only due to buried channels because in places the region is elevated above the surrounding plains.
![gravity on mars gravity on mars](http://www-k12.atmos.washington.edu/k12/mars/graphics/Mars_Earth.new.gif)
The new map reveals that this low gravity anomaly is definitely larger and follows the boundary between the highlands and the lowlands. “The better resolution of the new map helps interpret how the crust of the planet changed over Mars’ history in many regions.”įor example, an area of lower gravity between Acidalia Planitia and Tempe Terra was interpreted before as a system of buried channels that delivered water and sediments from Mars’ southern highlands into the northern lowlands billions of years ago when the Martian climate was wetter than it is today. “With this new map, we’ve been able to see gravity anomalies as small as about 100 kilometers (about 62 miles) across, and we’ve determined the crustal thickness of Mars with a resolution of around 120 kilometers (almost 75 miles),” said Genova. It took two years of analysis and computer modeling to remove the motion not caused by gravity.
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However, orbital changes from uneven gravity are tiny, and other forces that can perturb the motion of the spacecraft had to be carefully accounted for, such as the force of sunlight on the spacecraft’s solar panels and drag from the Red Planet’s thin upper atmosphere. The gravity field was recovered using about 16 years of data that were continuously collected in orbit around Mars. White and red are areas of higher gravity blue indicates areas of lower gravity. Furthermore, the improved resolution of our gravity map will help us understand the still-mysterious formation of specific regions of the planet.” Genova, who is affiliated with MIT but is located at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is the lead author of a paper on this research published online in the journal Icarus.Ī map of Martian gravity looking down at the South Pole (center). “The new gravity map will be helpful for future Mars exploration, because better knowledge of the planet’s gravity anomalies helps mission controllers insert spacecraft more precisely into orbit about Mars. “Gravity maps allow us to see inside a planet, just as a doctor uses an X-ray to see inside a patient,” said Antonio Genova of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts. The new gravity map will also help to put future spacecraft into orbit more precisely, ensuring that the Mars fleet continues to return a massive trove of data.Ī new map of Mars’ gravity made with three NASA spacecraft is the most detailed to date, providing a revealing glimpse into the hidden interior of the Red Planet. Scientists have used slight orbital fluctuations to map the gravity field of Mars, providing fresh insights into its crustal thickness, deep interior, and seasonal variations of dry ice at the poles.