STORY – The InSight probe observed live the two largest impacts detected in the Solar System in recent centuries.
Since February 2019, the heart of Mars has been bugged. Careful monitoring carried out using a French device, the SEIS seismometer, placed on the American InSight probe and which measures the slightest of Martian upheavals. Regularly, the planet is taken by slight spasms, which make it possible to understand its geology and its internal structure. And, at the end of the year 2021, two extraordinary events occurred while scientists around the world had their ears “glued” to this planetary stethoscope (ScienceOctober 27, 2022).
Two meteorites crashed on the surface of the red planet on September 18 and December 24, 2021. The two meteorites, with an estimated mass between 250 and 650 tons for an impact speed of around 7.5 km/ s, collided with Mars at 3500 and 7500 km from the InSight landing site. They left craters more than 130 meters in diameter on the Martian surface, the largest known impact craters formed during the last…
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