The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) revealed Thursday that the images taken by the InSight probe of a huge hole in Mars on December 24 last year were caused by what resembles an earthquake caused by a meteor colliding with the red planet.
At that time, Insight had recorded an earthquake measuring 4 on the Richter scale. Scientists linked the seismic discovery to seeing a large new crater, considering it one of the largest meteor strikes that hit Mars since NASA began observing and studying it.
While images from the orbiting vehicle’s cameras showed the area of the explosion in the crater, allowing scientists to compare it with the epicenter of the earthquake, which was monitored by “Insight”, according to CNN.
pieces of ice
The impact of meteorites also created a crater containing pieces of ice that was buried near the warm Martian equator, according to the study published Thursday in the journal “Science”, and this is the latest discovery of the presence of ice on the red planet.
The researchers also estimated that the meteorite was 16 to 39 feet (5 to 12 meters) in diameter. While it is small enough to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, this does not happen on Mars, which has a thin envelope of only 1% the density of Earth’s atmosphere.
When the meteorite hit the surface of Mars, it created a crater in the Amazonis Planetia region on its surface, 492 feet (150 meters) wide and 70 feet (21 meters) deep, with some material flying out from the crater 23 miles (37 kilometers) away.
biggest nozzle
“This is clearly the largest new crater we have ever seen,” said Brown University impact scientist, planetary scientist Ingrid Dubard, during a press conference. “We believe that a crater of this size will form somewhere on the planet once every few decades.” Maybe once in a generation.
“So it was very exciting to be able to watch this event, and it happened while the InSight probe was recording seismic data, which is a real scientific gift,” she added.
She also explained that if an earthquake like this occurred on Earth, it would be large enough to be felt, but not large enough to cause much damage, noting that “about a thousand earthquakes of this size occur on Earth every year, but Mars is less active than our planet, So it was a very big earthquake for the red planet.”
surface waves
Studying the discovered ice pieces will help to better understand the past climatic conditions on Mars and how and when the ice was deposited and buried.
It is reported that the earthquake that resulted from the impact caused surface waves (seismic wave) that moved along the top of the crust of Mars, while the data sent by the Insight probe will help scientists to study the planet’s crust and learn more about its structure.