According to data that NASA’s InSight lander had collected on the red planet, Mars is now rotating more quickly than it used to.
The now-retired InSight was armed with a suite of instruments, including antennae and a radio transponder called RISE, or the Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment.
The instruments were used to track Mars’ rotation during the mission’s first 900 days on the planet.
Based on the data, astronomers determined that the planet’s spin is increasing by about 4 milliarcseconds per year², or shortening the length of a Martian day by a fraction of a millisecond per year.
A Martian day lasts about 40 minutes longer than a day on Earth.
Scientists used the Deep Space Network to beam signals to RISE on InSight, which then reflected the signal back to Earth.
These relayed signals helped researchers track small frequency changes caused by the Doppler shift, which is what causes sirens to change in pitch depending on their distance.
The frequency changes correlated with the planet’s rotation.
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