“NASA Discovers the Largest Crater on Mars”

NASA has discovered a 150-meter-wide crater on Mars created by a meteorite impact, thanks to data from the InSight lander and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The InSight mission landed on Mars in November 2018 to observe the planet’s internal structure, mapping soil layers and broken roads. On December 24, 2021, the lander made an important discovery when it received seismic waves caused by a large meteorite impact. The discovery became even more remarkable with images taken from orbit, where scientists found a massive new crater.

“This is the largest crater we’ve ever seen,” Ingrid Daubar, a planetary scientist at Brown University, said at a press conference October 27. “We believe that a large crater like this can form on Mars every few decades. So it’s exciting to be able to witness an event and luckily it happens while it’s happening. The InSight lander is recording seismic data.”

In September, scientists on the InSight mission announced the detection of four asteroid impacts, each of which created a new crater in 2020 and early 2021. However, they were all meteors. small collisions, none of which are stronger than 2 on the Richter scale. The InSight team didn’t think they could detect a stronger impact, so the data from December 24 was a big surprise. Observations showed that a 4-magnitude impact created a crater more than 130 meters wide.

While the InSight team was investigating the source of the impact, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) also discovered a new large impact crater, according to Liliya Posiolova, head of the fund’s science operations team. of the MRO in California. Posiolova and colleagues first saw the new crater in data collected by the MRO’s Background camera.

According to Daubar, the crater spans 150 meters, the equivalent of two city blocks and ten times larger than the typical crater on Mars. Based on the size of the crater, scientists estimate the meteorite that hit the red planet was about 5-12 meters wide. The meteorite hit the planet’s surface deep enough to push rocks and large chunks of ice the size of a rock. Since the impact may have completely destroyed the meteorite, the team believes the ice came from beneath the planet’s surface. The crater created by the meteorite is located about 3,500 km from the InSight lander.

The researchers describe their findings in two papers published August 27 in the journal Science. This could be the last discovery from InSight to be published before the mission ends. The landing station has very little energy left due to dust accumulating on the solar panels. The station’s seismometer now observes only 8 hours of the 4 Martian days. The InSight team predicts the mission will be finished within the next few months.

Hits: 2