Single-station inversion of seismic data for the InSight mission to Mars

Terrestrial planets, such as Earth and Mars, possess a crust that forms during the accretion phase, preserving impressions of the fundamental processes involved in their formation and evolution. Unlike Earth, where most of the ancient crust has been recycled, Mars retains most of it as it does not possess plate tectonics. Investigation of its crustal thickness and structure can thus help constrain its early evolution and formation. In November 2018, NASA’s InSight mission successfully deployed a three-component, very broad-band seismometer on the surface of Mars. With continuous seismic monitoring of Mars for over three Earth years, the seismic data from InSight now presents us with an opportunity for in-situ investigation of the Martian crust for the very first time. This thesis presents the development and application of a single-station seismic method to image the crust of Mars and evaluate its crustal thickness and structure below the InSight landing site using recorded marsquakes.