On Christmas Eve in 2021, a meteor struck Mars, triggering a huge quake. NASA InSight lander captured the event.
Meteor strikes Mars and triggers massive quake
Scientists had no idea of the location of the quake on Mars until the images of the fresh impact carter were recorded by the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. “It was immediately clear that this is the biggest new crater we’d ever seen. It’s about 500 feet wide or about two city blocks across. And even though meteorites are hitting the planet all the time, this crater is more than 10 times larger than the typical new craters we see forming on Mars,” stated Ingrid Dunbar. Dunbar is the InSight impact science lead.
More on the new events
A Striking glow is evident around the new carder. Water particles as big as boulders were thrown up from under the surface. So far, NASA has not discovered water in such proximity to the Martian equator. Previously, NASA scientists observed the presence of water ice near the poles. The observation from the meteor crash was presented in two papers. The studies were published in Science, a popular journal on Thursday. Their new findings can help in resolving a long-standing conundrum about Martian geography.
The new findings will also help in future Mars missions. NASA generally prefers landing astronauts closer to the equator. The presence of water will also help humans mine water for personal use. Additionally, breaking it down to oxygen and water will help in providing rocket fuel for the return journey. “This is really exciting. This was one of the mission goals, to detect and identify surface waves. This just provides a single or a tiny piece of evidence to start to uncover the mystery,” stated Doyeon Kim. Kim is a geophysicist at ETH Zurich who was in charge of analyzing the data.
