High Precision SEIS Calibration for the InSight Mission and Its Applications

Abstract

Abstract Part of the InSight mission, the SEIS instrument (Seismic Experiment for Interior Structures), is planned to arrive on Mars in November 2018. In order to prepare its future recordings on the red planet, special attention was directed towards calibrating the seismometer in-situ on the Martian surface. Besides relative calibrations, we studied the possibility of actively calibrating the two kinds of seismometers onboard SEIS, the Very Broad Band seismometers (VBB) and the Short Period seismometers (SP) and extended the analysis towards a possible absolute calibration. For that purpose, we developed additional noise models at low frequency and elaborate on how they will be sensed by the seismic sensors from long-period data recorded by the seismometer. Such work will improve SEIS capabilities to unveil the inner structure of Mars by checking SEIS well-being and with applications such as gravimetry with the main Phobos tide. The current calibration procedure is planned to take one hour to calibrate the VBB sensors using the SP sensors, and determine the VBB gain with an accuracy of 0.4%, good enough to resolve the state of the Martian core.