Opportunistic Geophysics: Repurposing Inertial Measurement Units for Planetary, Field, and Classroom Seismology

Katie Gansler is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geological, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at the University of Maryland, where she characterizes inertial measurement units (IMUs), accelerometers used for navigation and attitude control on planetary rovers, as opportunistic seismic instruments for lunar surface missions. In this talk, she extends that work experimentally to the field, testing IMUs against conventional seismometers, and pedagogically to the classroom, using the same low-cost sensors to teach seismology in introductory geology courses. Across all three settings, she asks the same question: how much seismology can be done with instruments that were never built for the job?