On December 24, 2021, NASA's InSight lander on Mars felt the ground shake because of a marsquake equivalent to a magnitude 4 earthquake. According to NASA, they just recently determined that the cause of the quake was a large meteoroid impact on the Red Planet, the biggest seen since they began exploring space.
The meteoroid excavated boulder-sized chunks of ice buried closer to the Martian equator that has never been seen before. The discovery has implications for NASA's future plans of sending crewed missions to Mars.
Meteoroid Impact Created Big Crater
NASA scientists published their findings in the paper, titled "Largest recent impact craters on Mars: Orbital imaging and surface seismic co-investigation," in the journal Science.
They determined the quake was caused by a meteoroid after looking at the before-and-after photos from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and spotted a new crater. The event offers a new opportunity to study how a large impact shook the surface of Mars.
The meteoroid is estimated to have spanned 16 to 19 feet (5 to 12 meters), which is small enough that it would burn if it entered Earth's atmosphere. However, Mars has a thin atmosphere that it did not burn up the space rock upon entering and landed in a region called Amazonis Planitia that created a crater about 429 feet (150 meters) across and 70 feet (21 meters) deep.
The images and seismic data provide information about the impact that it is now considered to be one of the largest craters ever witnessed forming at any place in the Solar System. The space agency noted that there bigger craters on the Red Planet but they are older and predate any Mars mission.
InSight's Impact Science Working Group leader Ingrid Daubar of Brown University said in the press release that it is unprecedented to find a fresh impact as big as the crater.
Sadly, InSight has seen its power drastically decline in the past few months because of dust settling on its solar panels. Scientists estimate that the spacecraft now only have about six weeks before it completely shuts down, bringing the mission to an end.
Hunting Martian Craters
InSight scientists reported having detected a major marsquake on December 24 last year, SciTech Daily reported. They first spotted the crater working at Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) which operates the two cameras of MRO.
The Context Camera (CTX) produces the black and white images, while the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) provides the colored version so scientists could track the large-scale weather changes on Mars.
The crater was visible in MRCI data that allowed the scientists to pin down a 24-hour period when the meteoroid landed on the surface. It correlated with the seismic epicenter and demonstrated that the large meteoroid created a crater on December 24, 2021.
Establishing how fast the crater was created on the Martian surface is critical for refining the planet's geologic timeline. For example, older areas on both Moon and Mars have more craters compared to Earth because the process of erosion and plate tectonics moving on Earth erase older features from the surface.
Aside from the craters, MRO's High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) color camera also spotted large chunks of ice scattered from the impact site. Subsurface ice is a vital resource for astronauts who could use it for a variety of reasons, such as drinking water, agriculture, and rocket fuel.
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