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Weber, R. C.

Publications and source records attributed to Weber, R. C..

14 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2020

Cluster Analysis of Thermal Icequakes Using the Seismometer to Investigate Ice and Ocean Structure (SIIOS): Implications for Ocean World Seismology

Ocean Worlds are of high interest to the planetary community due to the potential habitability of their subsurface oceans. Over the next few decades several missions will be sent to ocean worlds including the Europa Clipper, Dragonfly, and possibly a Europa lander. The Dragonfly and Europa lander missions will carry seismic payloads tasked with detecting and locating seismic sources. The Seismometer to Investigate Ice and Ocean Structure (SIIOS) is a NASA PSTAR funded project that investigates ocean world seismology using terrestrial analogs. The goals of the SIIOS experiment include quantitatively comparing flight-candidate seismometers to traditional instruments, comparing single-station approaches to a small-aperture array, and characterizing the local seismic environment of our field sites. Here we present an analysis of detected local events at our field sites at Gulkana Glacier in Alaska and in Northwest Greenland approximately 80 km North of Qaanaaq, Greenland. Both field sites passively recorded data for about two weeks. We deployed our experiment on Gulkana Glacier in September 2017 and in Greenland in June 2018. At Gulkana there was a nearby USGS weather station which recorded wind data. Temperature data was collected using the MERRA satellite. In Greenland we deployed our own weather station to collect temperature and wind data. Gulkana represents a noisier and more active environment. Temperatures fluctuated around 0°C, allowing for surface runoff to occur during the day. The glacier had several moulins, and during deployment we heard several rockfalls from nearby mountains. In addition to the local environment, Gulkana is located close to an active plate boundary (relative to Greenland). This meant that there were more regional events recorded over two weeks, than in Greenland. Greenland’s local environment was also quieter, and less active. Temperatures remained below freezing. The Greenland ice was much thicker than Gulkana (~850 m versus ~100 m) and our stations were above a subglacial lake. Both conditions can reduce event detections from basal motion. Lastly, we encased our Greenland array in an aluminum vault and buried it beneath the surface unlike our array in Gulkana where the instruments were at the surface and covered with plastic bins. The vault further insulated the array from thermal and atmospheric events.

Marusiak, A. G.↗
NASA NTRS2020

Deep Learning Models for Planetary Seismicity Detection

Research in planetary seismology is fundamentally constrained by a lack of data. Seismo-logical science products of future missions can typically only be informed by theoretical signal/noise characteristics of the environment or likely Earth-analogues. Although objectives can be re-assessed after some initial data-collection upon lander arrival, transfer of high-resolution data back to Earth is costly on lander power usage. Over the last several years, development of GPU computing techniques and open-source high-level APIs have led to rapid advances in deep learning within the fields of computer vision, natural language processing, and collaborative filtering. These techniques are actively being adapted in seismology for a variety of tasks, including: earthquake detection, seismic phase discrimination, and ground-motion prediction. Until the recent detection of mars quakes during the Mars InSight mission, the only other measurements of seismicity recorded outside of Earth was on the Moon during the Apollo missions between 1969 to 1977. These unique data sets have been periodically revisited using new seismological methods, including ambient noise interferometry and Hidden Markov Models. Our objective is to develop a deep learning seismic detector and use it to catalog moonquakes from the Apollo 17 Lunar Seismic Profiling Experiment (LSPE) and compare the results with those obtained by other methods. Additionally, we will assess the accuracy tradeoff between using a training set of lunar data and one composed of Earth seismicity. In this document, we present preliminary results using a prototype classifier trained on a small set of earthquakes that was able to obtain detections for LSPE moonquakes with a greater accuracy than a recent study using Hidden Markov Models.

Civilini, F.↗
NASA NTRS2020

Determining the Shallow Surface Velocity at the Apollo 17 Landing Site

Many studies have been performed to determine the shallow surface velocity model at the Apollo 17 landing site. The Lunar Seismic Profiling Experiment (LSPE) had both an active component with eight explosive packages (EPs) and a passive experiment collecting data at various time intervals. Using the eight EPs, the initial shallow surface velocity model was determined to be 250 m/s in the first layer of depth 248 m, 1200 m/s with a depth of 927 m in the second layer, and 4000 m/s down to a depth of 2 km in the third layer. Have performed variations on this study to produce new velocity models shown. Recent studies have also been reanalyzing the passive LSPE data and have found three different thermal moonquake event types occurring at different times within the lunar day. The current goal of the project is to collocate the thermal moonquakes to physical surface features to determine the breakdown of lunar rocks. However, to locate shallow surface events, an accurate velocity model is needed. Presented a thermal moonquake location algorithm using first order approximation, including surface events only. To improve these approximations, a shallow surface velocity is needed.

Phillips, D.↗
NASA NTRS2020

Seasonal Variations of Seismic Activity on Mars?

We analyze the sequence of seismic events of different types as recorded by the SEIS instrument of the InSight mission. After several weeks without any detection, event counts started to increase at the end of May 2019. The majority of recorded events belongs to the class of 2.4 Hz events, which prominently excite a continuously observed natural resonance frequency. Comparison with expected event counts from a constant-rate Poisson process shows a repeated, step wise increase of the event rate with time. At the same time, event amplitudes, and hence magnitudes, are found to increase as well.

Knapmeyer, M.↗
NASA NTRS2019

Small-Array Location Capabilities Using the Seismometer to Investigate Ice and Ocean Structure (SIIOS): Implications for an Ocean World Lander

Ocean worlds have thick icy shells covering subsurface oceans. Due to the potential habitability of the subsurface ocean, Europa has become a target for a potential lander mission. Seismology is the preeminent method for constraining the thickness of an icy shell. The Seismometer to Investigate Ice and Ocean Structure (SIIOS) uses flight-candidate instrumentation to develop approaches for seismic studies of icy bodies. The SIIOS team deployed small aperture seismic arrays on Gulkana Glacier in 2017 and in Northwest Greenland in 2018.

Marusiak, A. G.↗
NASA NTRS2017

Structure and Evolution of the Lunar Interior

Early in its evolution, the Moon underwent a magma ocean phase leading to its differentiation into a feldspathic crust, cumulate mantle, and iron core. However, far from the simplest view of a uniform plagioclase flotation crust, the present-day crust of the Moon varies greatly in thickness, composition, and physical properties. Recent significant improvements in both data and analysis techniques have yielded fundamental advances in our understanding of the structure and evolution of the lunar interior. The structure of the crust is revealed by gravity, topography, magnetics, seismic, radar, electromagnetic, and VNIR remote sensing data. The mantle structure of the Moon is revealed primarily by seismic and laser ranging data. Together, this data paints a picture of a Moon that is heterogeneous in all directions and across all scales, whose structure is a result of its unique formation, differentiation, and subsequent evolution. This brief review highlights a small number of recent advances in our understanding of lunar structure.

interior↗
NASA NTRS2017

Shallow Lunar Seismic Activity and the Current Stress State of the Moon

A vast, global network of more than 3200 lobate thrust fault scarps has been revealed in high resolution Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) images. The fault scarps very young, less than 50 Ma, based on their small scale and crisp appearance, crosscutting relations with small-diameter impact craters, and rates of infilling of associated small, shallow graben and may be actively forming today. The population of young thrust fault scarps provides a window into the recent stress state of the Moon and offers insight into the origin of global lunar stresses. The distribution of orientations of the fault scarps is non-random, inconsistent with isotropic stresses from late-stage global contraction as the sole source of stress Modeling shows that tidal stresses contribute significantly to the current stress state of the lunar crust. Tidal stresses (orbital recession and diurnal tides) superimposed on stresses from global contraction result in non-isotropic compressional stress and thrust faults consistent with lobate scarp orientations. Stresses due to orbital recession do not change with orbital position, thus it is with the addition of diurnal stresses that peak stresses are reached. At apogee, diurnal and recession stresses are most compressive near the tidal axis, while at perigee they are most compressive 90 degrees away from the tidal axis. Coseismic slip events on currently active thrust faults are expected to be triggered when peak stresses are reached. Analysis of the timing of the 28 the shallow moonquakes recorded by the Apollo seismic network shows that 19 indeed occur when the Moon is closer to apogee, while only 9 shallow events occur when the Moon is closer to perigee. Here we show the results of relocating the shallow moonquake using an algorithm designed for sparse networks to better constrain their epicentral locations in order to compare them with stress models. The model for the current stress state of the Moon is refined by investigating the contribution of polar wander.

siesmology↗
NASA NTRS2016

Mass Wasting on the Moon: Implications for Seismicity

Introduction: Seismicity estimates play an important role in creating regional geological characterizations, which are useful for understanding a planet's formation and evolution, and of key importance to site selection for landed missions. Here we investigate the regional effects of lunar seismicity with the goal of determining whether surface features such as landslides and boulder trails on the Moon are triggered by fault motion.

faults↗
NASA NTRS2015

Mass Wasting In Planetary Environments: Implications For Seismicity

On Earth, mass wasting events such as rock falls and landslides are well known conse-quences of seismic activity. Through a variety of re-mote sensing techniques, tectonic faults have been pos-itively identified on all four of the inner planets, Earth's Moon, several outer planet satellites, and aster-oids. High-resolution imaging has furthermore ena-bled positive identification of mass wasting events on many of these bodies. On Mars, it has been suggested that fallen boulders may be indicative of pale-omarsquakes. On the Moon, meteor impacts and moonquakes have likewise been suggested as potential triggering mechanisms for mass wasting. Indeed, we know from the Apollo era that the Moon experienc-es a wide variety of seismicity. Seismicity estimates play an important role in creat-ing regional geological characterizations, which are useful not only for understanding a planet's formation and evolution, but also of key importance to site selec-tion for landed missions. Here we investigate the re-gional effects of seismicity in planetary environments with the goal of determining whether surface features such as landslides and boulder trails on the Moon, Mars, and Mercury could be triggered by fault motion. We attempt to quantify the amount of near-source ground shaking necessary to mobilize the mate-rial observed in various instances of mass wasting.

seismicity↗