There were four space rocks that crashed on Mars.
The first impacts detected by the seismometer since InSight touched down on Mars are the first of their kind on the red planet.
The impacts ranged between 53 and 180 miles from InSight's location, a region of Mars called Elysium.
The impacts were exciting. The images of the craters are my favorites. The craters looked great after three years.
The first one the team found made the most dramatic entrance, as it exploded into at least three shards that each left craters behind.
When NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter flew over the impact site, it used a black-and-white camera to show three dark spots on the surface. The team used the high-resolution camera to get a close up of the craters. Audio of the impacts can be found.
Three other impacts were confirmed after looking at earlier data.
It's important to have a precise location for the source of the impacts. This will allow us to do this more precisely, and it also shows us a lot about the impact process. This is the first time we've ever seen it.
Researchers don't know why they haven't found more meteorite impacts on Mars. The solar system's main asteroid belt has enough space rocks to scar the planet's surface. Mars' atmosphere is just 1% thicker than Earth's.
More than 1,300marsquakes have been detected by the seismometer. The instrument is provided by France's space agency, the Centre National d'tudes Spatiales. It was the first time an impact was detected.
The impact may have been obscured by noise from wind or seasonal changes in the atmosphere. Scientists expect to find more hidden within InSight's data now that the signature of an impact on Mars has been found.
It's planetary passion.
She sees the data's potential for enabling further study of other planets, including Earth.
She said that the purpose of studying other planets is to understand our own planet better.
She has been an assistant professor at Brown for three years.
I was fortunate enough to attend a public high school that had a planetarium. I became interested in astronomy and space.
She majors in astronomy at Cornell University. She became a research scientist at JPL after earning a PhD in planetary sciences.
"I am a big fan of craters," he said. They are one of the more exciting planetary processes we can study.
She said that hundreds of scientists and engineers around the world are contributing to the mission.
"I'm a visual person and I've worked on cameras a lot," she said, "so to me, having the visual proof of this physical phenomenon is really exciting." We have pictures of before and after. Right now, the surface of this plant is changing. It's not a geological process.
The strikes are based on science.
The data from the meteorites will help researchers understand Mars.
"We have a lot of data, which is great for scientists," he said. We've traveled a lot. A lot of us don't know.
Rocks cracking from heat and pressure are the cause of most marsquakes. Scientists can study Mars's crust, mantle and core by studying how the resulting seismic waves change.
Small earthquakes with a magnitude of no more than 2.0. Smaller earthquakes, like the magnitude 5 temblor that occurred in May 2022, can reveal more information about the planet's core and mantle.
The impacts did not go through the core and mantle. It allows us to use this knowledge for the entire catalog of events, with a new understanding from the data points on location and source.
Mars's timelines will be impacted by the impacts.
The lead author of the study said that the impact is the clock of the solar system. To estimate the age of different surfaces, we need to know the impact rate.
The age of a planet can be estimated by counting its impact craters. The surface of Mars has had more time to accumulate impact craters due to the lack of plate movement and active volcanism. Scientists can estimate how many more impacts happened earlier in the solar system's history with the help of statistical models.
Seismology can be used to tell what's inside a planet. It is the first mission to study the interior of the planet.
InSight's data can be used to rebuild a meteorite's trajectory and size. A shock wave is created when a meteorite hits the atmosphere and explodes. Sound waves are sent through the air. When the sound waves reach InSight, they tilt the ground. The seismometer on the landers can measure how much the ground tilts from the event.
The impact process is something we are learning more about. We can match different sizes of craters.
More information: Raphael Garcia, Newly formed craters on Mars located using seismic and acoustic wave data from InSight, Nature Geoscience (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41561-022-01014-0. www.nature.com/articles/s41561-022-01014-0 Journal information: Nature Geoscience
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