Seismometers for Harsh Atmospheric and Kinetic Environments (SHAKE)

Seismology has been a key method to better understand Earth's interior and it can be used to understand the interior of other planetary bodies in our solar system. There is an interest to further understand the core of e.g. Venus which has a similar size to Earth and of Icy moons such as Europa. There is also an interest of creating networks of miniaturized seismometers in order to have more accurate data. Seismometers have previously been placed on Mars, both in a large format (VBB) and in a micro format (SP) and on the Moon also in a large format (Apollo mission). However, these seismometers are either too large to be used for networks or not suitable for harsh environments such as the hot (750 K) surface of Venus, the cold (>50 K) surface of Europa or to measure the low seismic activity on the Moon. We propose a MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical systems) Seismometers for Harsh Atmospheric and Kinetic Environments (SHAKE) that can withstand both hot (750 K) and cold (50 K) temperatures by using a single material platform (silicon) compared to SP and has a high sensitivity, with a noise floor of about 6x10^(-11) m/s^(-2)/√Hz on Europa, 10^(-10) m/s^(-2)/√Hz on the Moon and 5x10^(-8) m/s^(-2)/√Hz on Venus. The small size of the sensor head makes it suitable for geo-networks as well as lowers the SWaP of the system.

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