Even after 50+ years of NASA exploring the Solar System, accessing the deep interiors of other planets still remains one of the grand challenges in the planetary sciences. Remarkable progress has been made on Earth, with thousands of sensitive seismic instruments placed around the globe, providing a wealth of information about the structure of our planet's crust, mantle, and core. The Apollo era saw the deployment of four seismometers on the surface of the Moon. These instruments provided a tantalizing glimpse of a seismically active lunar interior, however, a number of major questions still remain, such as the presence and size of the lunar core, and the distribution of heterogeneities within the mantle and crust. In this talk, Schmerr plans to review recent discoveries in the exploration of planetary interiors and discuss the state-of-the-art in using seismology to probe the deep structure of bodies in the Solar System. These recent new discoveries will provide the stepping stones for the design of future seismic missions to the Moon and beyond.

This event is free and open to the campus and community.