Okal, Emile A. | Search NASA

DOE OSTI2020

Rescuing Legacy Seismic Data FAIR’ly

The Earth’s interconnected and dynamical systems operate on a spectrum of time scales from millions of years to fractions of a second. While the evolution of the Earth and its deep interior are beyond the time span of human observations, understanding of many natural phenomena operating on human times scales have benefited from direct scientific observation. Continuous processes and those that are repeated over time shape the environment we live in. Furthermore, as we are faced with unprecedented changes to climate, understanding the deeper patterns and trends in natural systems through time have taken on new importance (Research Data Alliance, 2019). The call to reuse data is driven not only by economics but also by the recognition of their complete uniqueness (observations of natural systems are not repeatable) and scientific value in enhancing current understandings as well as potential new discoveries especially in the era of big data. These data are part of the historical record and our scientific heritage (American Geophysical Union, 2019) not only in explicitly recording earth observations but implicitly recording, and thus providing the evidence that addresses the manner in which science was conducted.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

NASA NTRS1991

Scientific Rationale and Requirements for a Global Seismic Network on Mars

Following a brief overview of the mission concepts for a Mars Global Network Mission as of the time of the workshop, we present the principal scientific objectives to be achieved by a Mars seismic network. We review the lessons for extraterrestrial seismology gained from experience to date on the Moon and on Mars. An important unknown on Mars is the expected rate of seismicity, but theoretical expectations and extrapolation from lunar experience both support the view that seismicity rates, wave propagation characteristics, and signal-to-noise ratios are favorable to the collection of a scientifically rich dataset during the multiyear operation of a global seismic experiment. We discuss how particular types of seismic waves will provide the most useful information to address each of the scientific objectives, and this discussion provides the basis for a strategy for station siting. Finally, we define the necessary technical requirements for the seismic stations.

Solomon, Sean C.↗