Two NASA spacecraft on Mars – one on the surface and the other in orbit – have recorded the largest meteor impact and impact crater ever recorded.
Last year high-speed barrage sent seismic waves thousands of miles away Mars planetwas found for the first time near the surface of another planet, and carved craters about 500 feet (150 meters) across, scientists reported Thursday in the journal Science.
The larger of the two strikes churned out boulder-sized slabs of ice, which could help researchers look for ways that future astronauts can tap into Mars’ natural resources.
InSight Lander Seismic tremors were measured while the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter provided stunning pictures of the resulting craters.
Co-author Lilia Posiolova of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego said imaging the crater “would have been much larger already,” but its matching to seismic waves was a bonus. “We were very lucky.”
Unlike but Mars has a thin atmosphere EarthWhere the dense atmosphere prevents most space rocks from reaching the ground, instead breaking up and incineration.
A separate study last month linked a series of smaller Martians recently Meteorite Impact with smaller craters closer to InSight, using data from the same lander and orbiter.
The impact observations come as InSight nears the end of its mission due to diminishing power, with its solar panels covered by a dust storm. InSight landed on Mars’ equatorial plains in 2018 and has recorded more than 1,300 marsquakes since then.
“It’s heartbreaking when we finally lose communication with InSight,” said Bruce Bannert NASA‘s jet propulsion laboratory, the lander’s chief scientist who participated in the study. “But the data he sent us will certainly keep us busy for years to come.”
Posiolova said the incoming space rocks were between 16 feet and 40 feet (5 meters and 12 meters) in diameter. The impact magnitude was recorded to be about 4.
The larger of the two was about 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) away from InSight last December, creating a crater about 70 feet (21 meters) deep. Posiolova said the orbiter’s cameras showed debris thrown up to 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the impact, as well as white patches of snow around the crater, the most frozen water ever seen at such low latitudes.
Posiolova spotted the crater earlier this year after taking additional photos of the area from orbit. The crater was missing from earlier photos, and after looking through the archives, it pinpointed the impact as late as December. He remembered a major seismic event recorded by InSight around that time, and with that team’s help, the fresh hole was undoubtedly matched by a meteorite strike. The blast wave was clearly visible.
The scientists also learned that the lander and orbiter worked together to account for an earlier meteorite strike, which was more than twice the distance of Dec. 1 and slightly smaller.
“Everyone was just shocked and amazed. And one? Yes,” she recalled.
Seismic readings from the two impacts indicate a denser Martian crust beyond InSight’s location.
“We still have a long way to go to understand the internal structure and dynamics of Mars, which is largely enigmatic,” said Douen Kim of the Institute of Geophysics at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, who was part of the research.
Scientists outside said future landers from Europe and China will carry even more advanced seismometers. Future missions will “paint a clearer picture” about the evolution of Mars, Yingjie Yang and Xiaofei Chen from China’s Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen wrote in an accompanying editorial.