Newsroom
By probing the deep interior of Mars, Cypriot planetary scientist Dr. Constantinos Charalambous has uncovered the fine-scale structure of the planet’s mantle, offering a new window into the early history of rocky worlds.
As a UK Space Agency Fellow and member of NASA’s InSight mission team, Dr. Charalambous led a study, recently published in Science, analyzing seismic waves from distant marsquakes and meteorite impacts. Using InSight’s seismometers, his team effectively performed a planetary “CT scan,” revealing that Mars’ mantle is far from uniform. Buried fragments, remnants of colossal early impacts and crystallized magma oceans, are scattered chaotically down to depths of 1,400 kilometers.
“These are scars of Mars’ planetary youth, preserved because Mars churned slowly beneath a single, rigid lid,” Dr. Charalambous told the Cyprus News Agency. “We reveal a heterogeneous, ‘fractured’ mantle that preserved the scars of its planetary youth.”
The findings illuminate Mars’ thermal evolution and interior dynamics. “Most rocky planets (and exoplanets) likely have stagnant lids, rather than plate tectonics like Earth. Understanding what happens inside them is crucial to figuring out which ones remain geologically active and which might be potentially habitable,” he said.
In 2019, NASA named two Martian rocks in the Cypriot dialect in recognition of Dr. Charalambous’ contributions, marking the first time his native language appeared on another planet.
“This is our first detailed, planet-wide look at its fine mantle structure,” he noted. “Turning a single seismometer, when on Earth we rely on global networks, into a tool for planetary tomography was a challenging but exhilarating journey.”
Dr. Charalambous said he hopes the work paves the way for future missions to Mars and beyond, including the NASA Farside Seismic Suite, which will record moonquakes and impacts on the far side of the Moon.
