Why does the compass work on Earth and not on Mars or the Moon?

The Earth is a huge magnet. It is not me who said that but the English scientist William Gilbert, almost 400 years ago. That’s why the compass on Earth works. But why, if we tried to find our way with a compass on the Moon or Mars, would we end up making useless circles? And what does this have to do with the spaceships, the astronauts that went to the Moon and the rover that landed on Mars in February? We will answer these questions and many more together.

Participants:
Fotini Vervelidou, Postodoctoral Researcher, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

Fotini Vervelidou is a graduate of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the Technical School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She did postgraduate studies at the École Polytechnique in Paris in the field of Remote Sensing. She received her PhD in Geophysics from the University of Paris Diderot and then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the German National Geosciences Research Institute, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum GFZ. Since December of 2019, she has been working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she initially started as a Marie Curie Fellow. Her research focuses on the magnetic field of the Earth, the Moon and the planet Mars.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA