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By Space Force
The U.S. Space Force honored Ed Mornston, associate deputy chief of Space Operations for Intelligence, for his 50 years of combined military and civilian service.
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By Amazing Space
BLOOD MOON TONIGHT! Total Lunar Eclipse September 7, 2025 + 5 Amazing Moon Features You Can See!
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By European Space Agency
Estonia marked its 10th anniversary in the European Space Agency alongside the plenary session of the European Interparliamentary Space Conference on 4 September.
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By NASA
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Scientists believe giant impacts — like the one depicted in this artist’s concept — occurred on Mars 4.5 billion years ago, injecting debris from the impact deep into the planet’s mantle. NASA’s InSight lander detected this debris before the mission’s end in 2022.NASA/JPL-Caltech Rocky material that impacted Mars lies scattered in giant lumps throughout the planet’s mantle, offering clues about Mars’ interior and its ancient past.
What appear to be fragments from the aftermath of massive impacts on Mars that occurred 4.5 billion years ago have been detected deep below the planet’s surface. The discovery was made thanks to NASA’s now-retired InSight lander, which recorded the findings before the mission’s end in 2022. The ancient impacts released enough energy to melt continent-size swaths of the early crust and mantle into vast magma oceans, simultaneously injecting the impactor fragments and Martian debris deep into the planet’s interior.
There’s no way to tell exactly what struck Mars: The early solar system was filled with a range of different rocky objects that could have done so, including some so large they were effectively protoplanets. The remains of these impacts still exist in the form of lumps that are as large as 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) across and scattered throughout the Martian mantle. They offer a record preserved only on worlds like Mars, whose lack of tectonic plates has kept its interior from being churned up the way Earth’s is through a process known as convection.
A cutaway view of Mars in this artist’s concept (not to scale) reveals debris from ancient impacts scattered through the planet’s mantle. On the surface at left, a meteoroid impact sends seismic signals through the interior; at right is NASA’s InSight lander.NASA/JPL-Caltech The finding was reported Thursday, Aug. 28, in a study published by the journal Science.
“We’ve never seen the inside of a planet in such fine detail and clarity before,” said the paper’s lead author, Constantinos Charalambous of Imperial College London. “What we’re seeing is a mantle studded with ancient fragments. Their survival to this day tells us Mars’ mantle has evolved sluggishly over billions of years. On Earth, features like these may well have been largely erased.”
InSight, which was managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, placed the first seismometer on Mars’ surface in 2018. The extremely sensitive instrument recorded 1,319 marsquakes before the lander’s end of mission in 2022.
NASA’s InSight took this selfie in 2019 using a camera on its robotic arm. The lander also used its arm to deploy the mission’s seismometer, whose data was used in a 2025 study showing impacts left chunks of debris deep in the planet’s interior.NASA/JPL-Caltech Quakes produce seismic waves that change as they pass through different kinds of material, providing scientists a way to study the interior of a planetary body. To date, the InSight team has measured the size, depth, and composition of Mars’ crust, mantle, and core. This latest discovery regarding the mantle’s composition suggests how much is still waiting to be discovered within InSight’s data.
“We knew Mars was a time capsule bearing records of its early formation, but we didn’t anticipate just how clearly we’d be able to see with InSight,” said Tom Pike of Imperial College London, coauthor of the paper.
Quake hunting
Mars lacks the tectonic plates that produce the temblors many people in seismically active areas are familiar with. But there are two other types of quakes on Earth that also occur on Mars: those caused by rocks cracking under heat and pressure, and those caused by meteoroid impacts.
Of the two types, meteoroid impacts on Mars produce high-frequency seismic waves that travel from the crust deep into the planet’s mantle, according to a paper published earlier this year in Geophysical Research Letters. Located beneath the planet’s crust, the Martian mantle can be as much as 960 miles (1,550 kilometers) thick and is made of solid rock that can reach temperatures as high as 2,732 degrees Fahrenheit (1,500 degrees Celsius).
Scrambled signals
The new Science paper identifies eight marsquakes whose seismic waves contained strong, high-frequency energy that reached deep into the mantle, where their seismic waves were distinctly altered.
“When we first saw this in our quake data, we thought the slowdowns were happening in the Martian crust,” Pike said. “But then we noticed that the farther seismic waves travel through the mantle, the more these high-frequency signals were being delayed.”
Using planetwide computer simulations, the team saw that the slowing down and scrambling happened only when the signals passed through small, localized regions within the mantle. They also determined that these regions appear to be lumps of material with a different composition than the surrounding mantle.
With one riddle solved, the team focused on another: how those lumps got there.
Turning back the clock, they concluded that the lumps likely arrived as giant asteroids or other rocky material that struck Mars during the early solar system, generating those oceans of magma as they drove deep into the mantle, bringing with them fragments of crust and mantle.
Charalambous likens the pattern to shattered glass — a few large shards with many smaller fragments. The pattern is consistent with a large release of energy that scattered many fragments of material throughout the mantle. It also fits well with current thinking that in the early solar system, asteroids and other planetary bodies regularly bombarded the young planets.
On Earth, the crust and uppermost mantle is continuously recycled by plate tectonics pushing a plate’s edge into the hot interior, where, through convection, hotter, less-dense material rises and cooler, denser material sinks. Mars, by contrast, lacks tectonic plates, and its interior circulates far more sluggishly. The fact that such fine structures are still visible today, Charalambous said, “tells us Mars hasn’t undergone the vigorous churning that would have smoothed out these lumps.”
And in that way, Mars could point to what may be lurking beneath the surface of other rocky planets that lack plate tectonics, including Venus and Mercury.
More about InSight
JPL managed InSight for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight was part of NASA’s Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supported spacecraft operations for the mission.
A number of European partners, including France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), supported the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors.
News Media Contacts
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Aug 28, 2025 Related Terms
InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars Explore More
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By NASA
Dr. Steven “Steve” Platnick took the NASA agency Deferred Resignation Program (DRP). His last work day was August 8, 2025. Steve spent more than three decades at, or associated with, NASA. While he began his civil servant career at the NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in 2002, his Goddard association went back to 1993, first as a contractor and then as one of the earliest employees of the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET), a cooperative agreement between the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and GSFC’s Earth Science Division. At JCET Steve helped lead the development of the Atmosphere Physics Track curricula. Previously, he had held an NRC post-doctoral fellow at the NASA’s Ames Research Center. Along with his research work on cloud remote sensing from satellite and airborne sensors, Steve served as the Deputy Director for Atmospheres in GSFC’s Earth Sciences Division from January 2015–July 2024.
Dr. Steve Platnick Image credit: NASA During his time at NASA, Steve played an integral role in the sustainability and advancement of NASA’s Earth Observing System platforms and data. In 2008, he took over as the Earth Observing System (EOS) Senior Project Scientist from Michael King. In this role, he led the EOS Project Science Office, which included support for related EOS facility airborne sensors, ground networks, and calibration labs. The office also supported The Earth Observer newsletter, the NASA Earth Observatory, and other outreach and exhibit activities on behalf of NASA Headquarter’s Earth Science Division and Science Mission Directorate (further details below). From January 2003 – February 2010, Steve served as the Aqua Deputy Project Scientist.
Improving Imager Cloud Algorithms
Steve was actively involved in the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Science Team serving as the Lead for the MODIS Atmosphere Discipline Team (cloud, aerosol and clear sky products) since 2008 and as the NASA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP)/JPSS Atmosphere Discipline Lead/co-Lead from 2012–2020. His research team enhanced, maintained, and evaluated MODIS and Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) cloud algorithms that included Level-2 (L2) Cloud Optical/Microphysical Properties components (MOD06 and MYD06 for MODIS on Terra and Aqua, respectively) and the Atmosphere Discipline Team Level-3 (L3) spatial/temporal products (MOD08, MYD08). The L2 cloud algorithms were developed to retrieve thermodynamic phase, optical thickness, effective particle radius, and derived water path for liquid and ice clouds, among other associated datasets. Working closely with longtime University of Wisconsin-Madison colleagues, the team also developed the CLDPROP continuity products designed to bridge the MODIS and VIIRS cloud data records by addressing differences in the spectral coverage between the two sensors; this product is currently in production for VIIRS on Suomi NPP and NOAA-20, as well as MODIS Aqua. The team also ported their CLDPROP code to Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) R-series Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) and sister sensors as a research demonstration effort.
Steve’s working group participation included the Global Energy and Water Exchanges (GEWEX) Cloud Assessment Working Group (2008–present); the International Cloud Working Group (ICWG), which is part of the Coordination Group for Meteorological Satellites (CGMS), and its original incarnation, the Cloud Retrieval Evaluation Working (CREW) since 2009; and the NASA Observations for Modeling Intercomparison Studies (obs4MIPs) Working Group (2011–2013). Other notable roles included Deputy Chair of the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) Science Definition Team (2011–2012) and membership in the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) Science Definition Team (2009–2011), the ABI Cloud Team (2005–2009), and the Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) Mission Concept Team (2010-2011).
Steve has participated in numerous major airborne field campaigns over his career. His key ER-2 flight scientist and/or science team management roles included the Monterey Area Ship Track experiment (MAST,1994), First (International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) Regional Experiment – Arctic Cloud Experiment [FIRE-ACE, 1998], Southern Africa Fire-Atmosphere Research Initiative (SAFARI-2000), Cirrus Regional Study of Tropical Anvils and Cirrus Layers – Florida Area Cirrus Experiment (CRYSTAL-FACE, 2002), and Tropical Composition, Cloud and Climate Coupling (TC4, 2007).
Supporting Earth Science Communications
Through his EOS Project Science Office role, Steve has been supportive of the activities of NASA’s Science Support Office (SSO) and personally participated in many NASA Science exhibits at both national and international scientific conferences, including serving as a Hyperwall presenter numerous times.
For The Earth Observer newsletter publication team in particular, Steve replaced Michael King as Acting EOS Senior Project Scientist in June 2008, taking over the authorship of “The Editor’s Corner” beginning with the May–June 2008 issue [Volume 20, Issue 3]. The Acting label was removed beginning with the January–February 2010 issue [Volume 22, Issue 1]. Steve has been a champion of continuing to retain a historical record of NASA science team meetings to maintain a chronology of advances made by different groups within the NASA Earth Science community. He was supportive of the Executive Editor’s efforts to create a series called “Perspectives on EOS,” which ran from 2008–2011 and told the stories of the early years of the EOS Program from the point of view of those who lived them. He also supported the development of articles to commemorate the 25th and 30th anniversary of The Earth Observer. Later, Steve helped guide the transition of the newsletter from a print publication – the November–December 2022 issue was the last printed issue – to fully online by July 2024, a few months after the publication’s 35th anniversary. The Earth Observer team will miss Steve’s keen insight, historical perspective, and encouragement that he has shown through his leadership for the past 85 issues of print and online publications.
A Career Recognized through Awards and Honors
Throughout his career, Steve has amassed numerous honors, including the Goddard William Nordberg Memorial Award for Earth Science in 2023 and the Verner E. Suomi Award from the American Meteorological Society (AMS) in 2016. He was named an AMS Fellow that same year. He received two NASA Agency Honor Awards – the Exceptional Achievement Medal in 2008 and the Exceptional Service Medal in 2015.
Steve received his bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in electrical engineering from Duke University and the University of California, Berkeley, respectively. He earned a Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences from the University of Arizona.
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