JPL engineers and technicians prepare NASA’s Farside Seismic Suite for testing in simulated lunar gravity, which is about one-sixth of Earth’s. The payload will gather the agency’s first seismic data from the Moon in nearly 50 years and take the first-ever seismic measurements from the far side.NASA’s Farside Seismic Suite undergoes work in a JPL clean room in March.
The Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure instrument aboard NASA’s Mars InSight is within the copper-colored hexagonal enclosure in this photo taken by a camera on the lander’s robotic arm on Dec. 4, 2018. The SEIS technology is being used on Farside Seismic Suite, bound for the Moon.Up to 30 times more sensitive than its Apollo predecessors, the suite will record the Moon’s seismic “background” vibration, which is driven by micrometeorites the size of small pebbles that pelt the surface.
It will also answer a lingering question about moonquakes: Why did the Apollo instruments on the lunar near side detect little far-side seismic activity? One possible explanation is that something in the Moon’s deep structure essentially absorbs far-side quakes, making them harder for Apollo’s seismometers to have sensed. Another is that there are fewer quakes on the far side, which on the surface looks very different from the side that faces Earth.
Seen here during assembly in November 2023, Farside Seismic Suite’s inner cube houses the NASA payload’s large battery and its two seismometers. The gold, puck-shaped device holds the Short Period sensor, while the silver enclosure contains the Very Broadband seismometer.The Very Broadband seismometer, or VBB, is the most sensitive seismometer ever built for use in space exploration: It can detect ground motions smaller than the size of a single hydrogen atom.
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