Hindsight from InSight: what science coud have been don with a simpler mission?

Abstract

The InSight mission was very successful at producing high quality seismic data to investigate the deep interior of Mars, delivering new estimates of the core size, the first value of the seismicity level and many other results. At the same time, the deployment of a high quality seismometer (very broadband, VBB) shaped the mission profile and required a dedicated robot arm. Future missions to Mars may want to carry a more robust short period seismometer (SP) to monitor the seismicity of the planet or investigate specific questions without shaping the whole mission around the instrument. We therefore investigated, which science results of the InSight mission could have been obtained with a significantly reduced effort.