QUESTION:
How do you detect Marsquakes?

ANSWER from Jeff Plescia on December 18, 1997:
Two sesimometers  were flown  on the  Viking spacecraft  back in 1976.
One  of  them  worked,  the  other  failed  to  uncage.    Because the
seismometers  were  located  within  the  spacecraft body and were not
isolated, they mostly saw the wind blowing over the lander body  (they
were very good  anemometers).  There  was one event  that was recorded
during the night  (when the winds  were normally low  - but at  a time
when there  was not  recorded meteorology  data) that  might be a Mars
quake.  Given all  of the uncertainties, not  much could be done  with
one signal and one station.

A good reference for the Viking experiment is Anderson et al 1977,  J.
Geophysical Research, v. 82, p. 4524-4546.

Another approach to Mars seismicity was taken by looking at the length
of faults and the ages and trying to estimate the total seismic moment
per year and  from that trying  to estimate how  many quakes per  year
there might be.  That work was done by Golombek et al (1992,  Science,
v. v. 258, p. 979-981)

In general there  should be no  difference detecting Mars  quakes from
detecting earthquakes.   One would use  the same types  of seismometer
and couple them to the ground in  the same way.  It would be  expected
that Mars  would be  less seismically  active than  the earth  and the
quakes  would  probably  be  distributed  differently.    Most  of the
terrestrial quakes are associated with plate boundaries.  Since  there
are no plate tectonics on Mars, there would not be the plate  boundary
earthquakes.    The  Mars  quakes  would  be  similar  to   intraplate
earthquakes.

Depending upon the problem you were tyring to study, one would lay out
a different array.   If you were only  interested in seeing the  large
quakes and  maybe trying  to determine  something about  the interior,
then three or  four stations spread  across the planet  would be fine.
If you were trying to determine the details of seimsicity in  Tharsis,
then it  would require  an array  laid around  Tharsis with probably a
half dozen or more stations.