— 3 years ago(October 28, 2022 01:03 PM)

NASA
'
s Insight Lander
reveals new data about
Mars
.
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.
Christmas came a little early for
NASA
’s
InSight
mission last December when the lander detected a massive quake on
Mars
.
Now, scientists know what caused the red planet to rumble. A meteoroid slammed into
Mars
2174 miles (3500 kilometers) away from the lander and created a fresh impact crater on the
Martian
surface.
The ground literally moved beneath
InSight
on December 24th, 2021, when the lander recorded a magnitude 4 MARSQUAKE. Before and after photos captured from above by the
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
, which has been circling
Mars
since 2006, spotted a new crater this past February.
Before and after photos taken by the
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
show where a meteoroid slammed into
Mars
on December 24th
,
2021
.
NASA
/
JPL

Caltech
/
MSSS
.
When scientists connected the dots from both missions, they realized it was one of the largest meteoroids strikes on
Mars
since
NASA
began studying the red planet. Images from the orbiter’s two cameras showed the blast zone of the crater, which allowed scientists to compare it with the epicenter of the quake detected by InSight.
The journal
Science
published two new studies describing the impact and its effects on Thursday.
The space rock also revealed boulder-size ice chunks when it slammed into
Mars
. They were found buried closer to the warm
Martian
equator than any ice that has ever been detected on the planet.
Boulder

size ice chunks can be seen scattered around and outside the new crater
's
rim
.
NASA
/
JPL

Caltech
/
University of Arizona
.
“The image of the impact was unlike any I had seen before, with the massive crater, the exposed ice, and the dramatic blast zone preserved in the
Martian
dust,” said
Liliya Posiolova
, orbital science operations lead for the orbiter at
Malin Space Science Systems
in
San Diego
, in a statement.
“I couldn’t help but imagine what it must have been like to witness the impact, the atmospheric blast, and debris ejected miles downrange.”
Studying the ice revealed by the impact will help scientists better understand previous climate conditions on
Mars
, as well as how and when the ice was deposited and buried.
Researchers estimated the meteoroid, the name for a space rock before it hits the ground, was about 16 to 39 feet (5 to 12 meters). While this would have been small enough to burn up in
Earth
’s atmosphere, the same can’t be said for
Mars
, which has a thin atmosphere of only 1% as dense as
Earth
’s.
When the meteoroid crashed into
Mars
, it created a crater in the planet’s
Amazonis Planitia
region spanning 492 feet (150 meters) across and 70 feet (21 meters) deep. Some of the material blasted out of the crater landed as far as 23 miles (37 kilometers) away. Teams at
NASA
also captured sound from the impact, so you can listen to what it sounds like when a space rock hits
Mars
.
NASA
’
s InSight
Records the Sound of a
Martian
Impact
.
NASA
/
JPL

Caltech
/
CNES
/
Imperial College London
.
The images captured by the orbiter, along with seismic data recorded by
InSight
, make the impact one of the largest craters in our solar system ever observed as it was created.
Mars
is littered with massive craters, but they’re much older than any mission to explore the red planet.
“It’s unprecedented to find a fresh impact of this size,” said
Ingrid Daubar
,
InSight
impact science lead at
Brown University
in
Providence
,
Rhode Island
, in a statement. “It’s an exciting moment in geologic history, and we got to witness it.”
If a quake like this one had occurred on
Earth
, it would be “big enough to be felt, but not big enough to cause a ton of damage,”
Daubar
said. About a thousand quakes of this size occur on
Earth
each year, but
Mars
is less active than our planet, so it was “a pretty big one” for the red planet, she said.
The quake that resulted from the impact also created surface waves or seismic waves that moved along the top of the
Martian
crust.
InSight
’s data from the event will help scientists study the planet’s crust and learn more about its structure.
Studying craters and their formation rate can help scientists pin down
Mars
’ geologic timeline. Impact craters also excavate material and bring it to the surface, like the ice revealed by the December 24th strike.
The ice beneath the
Martian
surface could be used for drinking water, rocket propellant and even growing crops and plants by future astronauts. And the fact that the ice was found so near the equator, the warmest region on
Mars
, might make it an ideal place to land crewed missions to the red planet.
Previously,
InSight
has “heard” and detected space rocks hitting
Mars
, but the December impact was the largest. Since landing in 2018, the mission has revealed new details about
Mars
’ crust, mantle, and core and detected 1318
MARSQUAKE
.
Sadly,
InSight
’s mission is running out of time. Increasing amounts of dust have settled on the lander’s solar panels, only exacerbated by a continent-si