Sweet surprise: Look inside Mars reveals the Red Planet's crust resembles a three-layer cake

Data beamed back to Earth from NASA's InSight lander suggests Mars' crust is composed of three cake-like layers. Anchored near Mars' equator, the robotic lander's super-sensitive seismometer, known as SEIS, has recorded hundreds of'marsquakes' in the past two years. Each quake emits two sets of seismic waves and analyzing the differences in how those waves move has allowed researchers to begin calculating the size and composition of the planet's crust, mantle and core. 'We have enough data to start answering some of these big questions,' Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist Bruce Banerdt told Nature. Launched in 2018, the InSight mission marks the first time scientists have peered inside a planet other than Earth.