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Global crustal thickness revealed by surface waves orbiting Mars
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  • Doyeon Kim,
  • Cecilia Duran,
  • Domenico Giardini,
  • Ana-Catalina Plesa,
  • Simon C. Stähler,
  • Christian Boehm,
  • Vedran Lekic,
  • Scott M. McLennan,
  • Savas Ceylan,
  • John Clinton,
  • Paul McEwan Davis,
  • Amir Khan,
  • Brigitte Knapmeyer-Endrun,
  • Mark Paul Panning,
  • Mark A. Wieczorek,
  • Philippe Lognonné
Doyeon Kim
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Cecilia Duran
ETH Zürich
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Domenico Giardini
ETH Zürich
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Ana-Catalina Plesa
German Aerospace Center
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Simon C. Stähler
Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich
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Christian Boehm
Department of Earth Sciences, Institute of Geophysics, ETH Zürich
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Vedran Lekic
University of Maryland, College Park
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Scott M. McLennan
Stony Brook University
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Savas Ceylan
ETH Zurich
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John Clinton
Swiss Seismological Service
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Paul McEwan Davis
University of California Los Angeles
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Amir Khan
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
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Brigitte Knapmeyer-Endrun
Bensberg Observatory, University of Cologne
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Mark Paul Panning
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
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Mark A. Wieczorek
Université Paris Cité
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Philippe Lognonné
Université Paris Cité, Institute de physique de globe de Paris, CNRS
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Abstract

We report observations of Rayleigh waves that orbit around Mars up to three times following the S1222a marsquake. Averaging these signals, we find the largest amplitude signals at 30 s and 85 s central period, propagating with distinctly different group velocities of 2.9 km/s and 3.8 km/s, respectively. The group velocities constraining the average crustal thickness beneath the great circle path rule out the majority of previous crustal models of Mars that have a >200 kg/m3 density contrast across the dichotomy. We find that the thickness of the martian crust is 42-56 km on average, and thus thicker than the crusts of the Earth and Moon. Together with thermal evolution models, a thick martian crust suggests that the crust must contain 50-70% of the total heat production to explain present-day local melt zones in the interior of Mars.
02 Mar 2023Submitted to ESS Open Archive
06 Mar 2023Published in ESS Open Archive