International Engagement of Students with Martian Seismic Data

After a 6-month flight to Mars, and a successful landing, InSight is currently deploying the first seismometer to sit on the Martian surface. The InSight mission aims to explore the interior of Mars using seismic data from marsquakes and meteorite impacts. The data from InSight offers a chance to leverage existing international Seismographs in Schools networks to allow a large and growing number of students to interact with seismic data recorded on Mars as soon as it is available on Earth. Students in these networks have experience with seismic data and software and are primed to engage with this NASA Discovery mission.

Seismic data in the classroom have provided both a hook for inquiry with real data as well as a common language for international collaboration. Seismology offers unique opportunities to enrich earth science and physics curricula, involving students in questioning and problem solving. In the US preparations are underway on lessons, software, web tools, and data viewers in advance of data arrival to allow students to explore and interrogate shaking on Mars. In the UK a set of hands-on classroom activities has been designed to support the InSight mission science, including innovative seismic experiments that can be carried out using build-your-own seismometer kits made from "lego" bricks.

Students will be able to observe daily variations in ground motions and to analyze 3-component data from the broadband sensor, to attempt to locate marsquakes and meteor strikes. Being among the first to work with Martian seismic data, students are working alongside scientists on the next frontier of seismic exploration. When the science team initiated a blind test to explore detection and discrimination techniques, schools were encouraged to participate. Twenty French schools accepted the challenge which consisted of analyzing one month of data of the test blind to detect seismic events. For schools, the priority was the educational approach to follow, more than the final catalogue.