Julia Hernandez
(CNN) – Hundreds of basketball-sized space rocks crash into Mars every year, leaving behind impact craters and sending rumbles across the red planet, according to new research.
Mission planners could use these revelations, recorded in data collected by a now-retired NASA mission, to determine where to land future robotic missions and astronaut crews on the Red Planet.
NASA’s InSight mission ended when the stationary lander lost the battle against a buildup of Martian dust on its solar panels in December 2022, but the wealth of data the spacecraft collected continues to fuel new research.
The lander brought the first seismometer to Mars, and the sensitive instrument was able to detect seismic waves that occurred thousands of kilometers from InSight’s location on Elysium Planitia, a gentle plain just north of the planet’s equator.
During its stay on Mars, InSight used its seismometer to detect more than 1,300 earthquakes, which occur when the Martian subsoil cracks due to pressure and heat.
But InSight also captured evidence of meteoroids crashing into Mars.
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According to NASA, meteoroids are space rocks that break off from larger rocky bodies and range in size from grains of dust to small asteroids. Known as meteoroids when they are still in space, they are called meteors when they pass through the atmosphere of Earth or other planets.
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured an image of a meteoroid impact that was later linked to a seismic event detected by the agency’s InSight lander. This crater formed on May 27, 2020. NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Scientists have wondered why more impacts were not detected on Mars, since the planet is located next to the main asteroid belt of our solar system, where many space rocks come out to collide with the Martian surface. The Martian atmosphere is only 1% as thick as Earth’s atmosphere, meaning more meteoroids pass through it without disintegrating.
A meteoroid hit the Martian atmosphere on September 5, 2021, and then exploded into at least three fragments, each leaving behind a crater on the surface of the red planet. And that was just the beginning.
In search of new craters
Since 2021, researchers have pored over InSight data and determined that space rocks bombard Mars more often than previously thought, as much as two to ten times more than previous estimates, according to a new study published this Friday. in the journal Science Advances.
“Mars may be more geologically active than we thought, which has implications for the age and evolution of the planet’s surface,” said study lead author Ingrid Daubar, an associate professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Brown University, in a statement. “Our results are based on a small number of examples that we have available, but the current impact rate estimate suggests that the planet is being hit much more frequently than we can see using images alone.”
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The team identified eight new meteoroid-created impact craters from InSight data that had not been previously detected by planet-circling orbiters. Six of the craters were near InSight’s landing site, and two of the distant impacts were among the largest yet detected by scientists observing the Red Planet, according to the study.
Each of the two large impacts left craters the size of a football field and occurred 97 days apart.
The orbiter detected a meteoroid impact on February 18, 2021. InSight tracked a seismic signal from the event. NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
“We would expect an impact of this size to happen once every two decades, or even once in a lifetime, but here we have two impacts within 90 days of each other,” Daubar explains. “It could be a crazy coincidence, but there is very little chance of it being so. Most likely the two large impacts are related, or the impact rate on Mars is much higher than we thought.”
The team compared data collected by InSight with data taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to determine where the impacts occurred. Before-and-after images allowed the team to confirm eight of the craters. It’s possible that InSight recorded more impacts during its mission, so the team plans to continue analyzing the data and looking for orbital evidence of new craters.
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“Planetary impacts are happening all the time throughout the solar system,” Daubar explains. “We’re interested in studying it on Mars because we can then compare and contrast what’s happening on Mars with what’s happening on Earth. This is important for understanding our solar system, what’s in it, and what the population of bodies that impact our solar system looks like, both as hazards to Earth and historically to other planets.”
Following the seismic signals
A companion paper, published Friday in the journal Nature Communications, also explored seismic events recorded by InSight to determine which basketball-sized meteoroids are slamming into Mars on a near-daily basis.
According to the study, between 280 and 360 meteoroids hit the red planet each year and form impact craters more than 8 meters in diameter. The largest craters, 30 meters, occur about once a month, according to the study authors. “This rate is about five times higher than that estimated from orbital images alone,” Dr. Géraldine Zenhäusern, co-lead author of the study and professor of Seismology and Geodynamics at ETH Zürich (Switzerland), said in a statement. “Aligned with orbital images, our findings demonstrate that seismology is an excellent tool for measuring impact rates.”
By analyzing seismic events traced to meteoroids, the team has identified about 80 earthquakes recorded by InSight that could have been caused by impacts. Earthquakes due to meteoroid impacts occur more frequently and are shorter in duration than other earthquakes caused by underground activity.
InSight data was compared with orbiter photos, such as this one of an impact crater created on August 30, 2021, to pinpoint when and where meteoroid impacts occur on the Red Planet. NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
“Although the new craters can be seen best on flat, dusty terrain, where they really stand out, this type of terrain covers less than half of the surface of Mars,” Zenhäusern said. “However, InSight’s sensitive seismometer was able to hear each and every impact within range of the lander.”
According to the researchers, seismic data of the slightest movements of the Martian ground could be the most direct way to understand how many impacts occur on Mars. “By using seismic data to better understand how frequently meteorites hit Mars and how these impacts change its surface, we can begin to reconstruct a timeline of the geological history and evolution of the Red Planet,” study co-author Dr Natalia Wojcicka, a research associate in the Department of Earth Sciences and Engineering at Imperial College London, said in a statement. “It could be thought of as a kind of ‘cosmic clock’ that would help us date Martian surfaces and perhaps, down the road, other planets in the Solar System.”
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2024-06-29 12:45:45
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