NASA has said that Mars is spinning faster every year and that a day on Mars is getting shorter by a fraction of a millisecond each year. The US space agency, however, noted that it is not quite sure about the reason why it is happening.
Scientists have been analysing data from Nasa’s InSight Mars lander to track the planet’s spin rate and the findings were recently published in paper Nature.
NASA suggested that the data sent by the spacecraft reflects that Mars’ rotation rate is accelerating by about 4 milliarcseconds per year. It is to be noted that the spacecraft retired last December and the data it sent has provided new details about how fast the planet rotates and how much it wobbles.
Why Mars is spinning faster
Scientists made the most precise measurements ever of Mars’ rotation saying the planet’s wobbling is due to the “sloshing” of its molten metal core.
“It’s really cool to be able to get this latest measurement – and so precisely,” said InSight’s principal investigator, Bruce Banerdt of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
“I’ve been involved in efforts to get a geophysical station like InSight onto Mars for a long time, and results like this make all those decades of work worth it,” Banerdt added.
How NASA tracked Mars’ spin rate?
To track the planet’s spin rate, the study’s authors relied on one of InSight’s instruments: a radio transponder and antennas collectively called the Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment, or RISE.
“They found the planet’s rotation is accelerating by about 4 milliarcseconds per year – corresponding to a shortening of the length of the Martian day by a fraction of a millisecond per year,” NASA said.
It’s a subtle acceleration and scientists say that it could be due to ice accumulating on the polar caps or post-glacial rebound, where landmasses rise after being buried by ice.
