NASA’s InSight Lander Finds Meteoroid on Mars During Christmas Eve Last Year

A new study released on Thursday mentioned that a NASA lander on Mars experienced shockwaves following a significant meteor hit on the Red Planet on Christmas Eve last year.

CNN noted that a sizable crater that the meteoroid left behind on the red planet showed shimmering ice fragments near the warm Martian equator.

The InSight lander's discoveries enable researchers to fully comprehend and map Mars' innards and crust, perhaps revealing more about the planet's origins and even its atmosphere.

Meteor Shocks NASA InSight Lander, Mars, on Christmas Eve

According to two new studies published in Science, InSight experienced a magnitude four marsquake on Christmas Eve last year brought on by a meteor strike.

InSight has not previously observed any waves produced by this meteor collision, known as surface waves. Still, they are very helpful when attempting to map the planet's crust.

The collision happened over 2,000 kilometers from InSight.

"So the whole path between the event - in this case, the impact - and InSight is sampled by the surface waves as they move across the planet," said InSight's principal investigator Bruce Banerdt per Space.com.

This month's separate research indicated that magma may still flow beneath the surface of at least one area of Mars, resulting in marsquakes. This study was also published in Nature Astronomy.

NASA’s InSight Lander Detects Stunning Meteoroid Impact on Mars — The impact crater, formed Dec. 24, 2021, by a meteoroid strike in the Amazonis Planitia region of Mars, is about 490 feet (150 meters) across, as seen in this annotated image taken by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE camera) aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

ALSO READ : Large Meteoroid Strike on Mars Caused a Magnitude 4 Marsquake, Huge Crater on the Red Planet

NASA MRO's Role in Seeing Meteoroid

Later, the meteor impact crater was also seen by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. According to NASA, the hit sent debris up to 23 miles distant and revealed ice.

"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, who leads the Orbital Science and Operations Group at MSSS (per NASA).

"I couldn't help but imagine what it must have been like to witness the impact, the atmospheric blast, and debris ejected miles downrange," added Posiolova.

Other InSight Lander News

The large dust storm threatened to hide NASA's Mars lander is already beginning to subside. Early in October, the sky above InSight had started to get obscured by dust, and the team feared that their mission might be cut short.

Claire Newman, an atmospheric scientist at Aeolis Research who analyzes weather data from Mars surface missions, told Space.com that the InSight lander had passed the storm's full fury, and dust was beginning to fall from the sky.

InSight is particularly vulnerable to dust storms since it is a solar-powered rover, although nuclear-powered Curiosity and Perseverance might still benefit from early notice of a storm.