The impact crater, formed on December 24, 2021, by a meteorite strike in the Amazonis Planitia region of Mars, is approximately 490 feet (150 meters) across, as seen in the noted image. This image was captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE camera) aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona
NASA on Thursday shared its observations about the meteorite impact on Mars that occurred last year – by far the largest meteor impact the agency has observed on the Red Planet and the one that helps reveal new sources of water ice, surprising.
The impact, which occurred last December, created a crater about 500 feet wide – the width of two city blocks, scientists say. Ingrid Daubar, InSight’s head of impact science, told reporters: “Although meteors always hit Mars, the impact is clearly different,” said Ingrid Daubar, head of impact science at Mars. InSight told reporters – the crater it leaves behind is 10 times larger than typical newly formed craters.
“We think a crater this size could form somewhere on the planet every few decades, maybe once in a generation,” she said. “So it’s very exciting to be able to witness this event.”
NASA can record this event using a variety of instruments. The InSight Mars lander first reported the occurrence of a large earthquake on December 24. NASA was able to confirm that it was the result of a meteorite impact by looking at the meteorites. before and after images from its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The MRO has two cameras on board, both of which are used to study the crater: the Context Camera (CTX) provides medium-resolution, black-and-white images, while the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) manufacturing Daily map of the entire planet to track large-scale weather changes.
This asteroid impact crater on Mars was discovered using the Black and White Background Camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The scene camera captured before and after images of the collision, which occurred on December 24, 2021, in a region of Mars called Amazonis Planitia. NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
NASA on Thursday published two papers about its observations in the journal Science.
The quake that occurred after impact was a magnitude 4.0 earthquake, Daubar said, a relative scale earthquake on Earth where there is more seismic activity, but is a relatively large earthquake for Mars.
The images captured by the MRO camera showed “rock-sized” bodies of water ice in the crater, Daubar said, as well as splashing across the landscape outside the crater.
“This is surprising because this is the warmest point on Mars – the closest place to the equator – that we have ever seen water ice,” she explains. “So scientists will be able to use this to limit previous climate conditions on Mars – when and how this ice was deposited, buried and preserved for future generations.” until now.”
Scientists already know there is water ice near the poles on Mars.
“But when planning future human exploration of Mars, we wanted to get astronauts to land as close to the equator,” said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division. the better”. “It’s possible to access ice at lower latitudes – that ice can be converted to water, oxygen or hydrogen. That could be really helpful.”
Glaze said the meteorite created a crater between 5 and 12 meters wide. She notes that asteroids of this size enter Earth’s atmosphere about once a year, but they usually burn up in Earth’s thicker atmosphere.
The scientists concluded that the ice found in and around the crater came from Mars — and not from meteorites — because an impact of this size would destroy the meteorite, Daubar said. In addition, the locations where the ice sheet was found suggests it was excavated from below the surface.
The crater is located in a region of Mars called Amazonis Planitia, about 3,500 km from where InSight is located.
The InSight spacecraft, which landed on Mars in November 2018, effectively ended its science mission this past summer and won’t work at all later this year after a power outage. Back in the spring, InSight’s solar panels produced about 500 watt-hours per sol (per Mars day) – enough to power an electric oven for just 10 minutes. That’s down from 5,000 watt-hours at the beginning of the Insight’s mission.
Now, after a major summer dust storm disrupted the solar panels, InSight reduces power output to less than 300 watt-hours. NASA is still operating InSight’s seismometer, but only one day out of four.
Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal investigator for NASA’s Jet Aircraft, said: “Perhaps between four and eight weeks, in our projections, we anticipate the lander will no longer be fully functional. energy to operate anymore and we will lose contact with the spacecraft. Propulsion Laboratory. “So it’s a sad thing to ponder. But Insight has been doing great for the past four years.”
