New Views of Lunar Seismicity Brought by Analysis of Newly Discovered
Moonquakes in Apollo Short-Period Seismic Data
Abstract
In the 1970s, two types of seismometers were installed on the nearside
of the Moon. One type is called the Long-Period (LP) seismometer, which
is sensitive below 1.5 Hz. The other is called the Short-Period (SP)
seismometer, whose sensitivity is high around 2 – 10 Hz. So far, more
than 13,000 seismic events have been identified through LP data
analyses, which allowed us to investigate lunar seismicity and the
internal structure. On the other hand, most of the SP data have remained
unanalyzed because they include numerous unnatural signals and/or
instrumental noises. This fact leads to the hypotheses that (i) we have
missed lots of high-frequency seismic events and (ii) lunar seismicity
could be underestimated. To verify these ideas, this study conducted an
analysis of the SP data. In the analysis, I denoised the original SP
data and performed the event detections by comparing the spectral
features between the cataloged high-frequency events (such as shallow
moonquakes) and the continuous SP data. Eventually, I discovered 22,000
new seismic events, including thermal moonquakes, impact-induced events,
and shallow moonquakes. Among these, I focused on analyzing shallow
moonquakes — tectonic-related quakes. Consequently, it turned out that
there are nearly three times more tectonic events than considered
before. Furthermore, additional detections of shallow moonquakes enabled
me to see the regionality in seismicity. Comparing three landing sites
(Apollo 14, 15, and 16), I found that the Apollo 15 site is more
seismically active than others. These findings can change the
conventional views of lunar seismicity.