Biggest meteor strike on Mars
Biggest meteor strike on Mars
By: My space stories
Two NASA spacecraft, one pn surface and one in space, recorded the biggest meteor strike yet.
Two spacecraft recorded
Two spacecraft recorded
The Insight lander measured the seismic shocks, while the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter provided stunning pictures of the resulting craters.
Mars' atmosphere is thin unlike on Earth, where the thick atmosphere prevents most space rocks from reaching the ground, instead breaking and incinerating them.
InSight landed on the equatorial plains of Mars in 2018 and has since recorded more than 1,300 marsquakes.
Incoming space rocks were between 16 feet and 40 feet (5 meters and 12 meters) in diameter, said Posiolova. The impacts registered about magnitude 4.
The larger of the two struck last December some 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) from InSight, creating a crater roughly 70 feet (21 meters) deep.
The orbiter's cameras showed debris hurled up to 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the impact, as well as white patches of ice around the crater.
