It is the first time that a meteorite impact has been detected on another planet and the sound of it has been captured by NASA.

InSight was sent to Mars in order to detect marsquakes, which are earthquakes that occur beneath the surface. In the video below, you can hear the sound of a meteorite hitting Mars last year.

The impact was reported in a new paper this week.

The space rock exploded into three parts when it hit Mars.

The data shows that the meteorites hit the martian surface between 53 and 180 miles away from InSight.

The audio of one of the strikes sounds like a loop due to a peculiar atmospheric effect heard before high-pitched sounds.

The atmosphere retains some heat after the sun goes down. The sound waves travel at different speeds. Lower-pitched sounds come before high-pitched sounds. An observer close to the impact would hear a bang while someone far away would hear the bass sounds first.

NASA used the HiRISE camera to get a close-up of the craters.

Craters caused by a meteoroid impact on Mars.
This collage shows three other meteoroid impacts that were detected by the seismometer on NASA’s InSight lander and captured by the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter using its HiRISE camera. NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona.

Scientists change the camera's filters to improve the color of the image when they see the human eye's inability to detect certain wavelengths of light. Dust has been removed or disturbed by the blast of the impact in the areas that appear blue around the craters. The surface is dark and blue because ofMartian dust.

The detection of meteorite strikes is exciting for the team, but the main work of the landers has been to detect marsquakes. It detected the strongest earthquake on another planet.

As a result of a gradual build up of dust on its solar panels, InSight will soon cease to exist.

There is a lot of data from the mission which the team considers a huge success.

The team is trying to find evidence of other meteorite strikes that it might have missed. It said other impacts may have been obscured by noise from wind or by seasonal changes in the atmosphere, but now that it has a better understanding of the distinctive seismic signature of a rock striking Mars, it's confident it will find more examples of meteorite strikes.

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