Fresh Crater on Mars Created by Meteorite Impact Reveals Chunks of Ice

NASA released images of a fresh crater on Mars that was created due to the force of a major meteorite impact that revealed chunks of ice under the red planet's surface.

The meteor was estimated to have struck Mars' surface on Deccember 24, 2021, the day before the space agency's James Webb Space Telescope launched. The impact of the cosmic object left a crater that was nearly 500 feet across. NASA made the images of the crater, which were taken by a Mars-orbiting satellite, public this week.

Fresh Mars Crater

During a Thursday press conference, the director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, Lori Glaze, said that the meteorite that caused the crater was probably about 17 to 33 feet across. A paper that described the impact and its seismic effects was published in Science this week.

A planetary scientist at Brown University, Ingrid Daubar, who leads InSight's Impact Science Working Group, said in a NASA release that it was unprecedented to find such a fresh impact of the size that was discovered on Mars. She noted that it was an exciting moment in geologic history, as per Gizmodo.

Experts said that the meteorite strike was immediately detected as a magnitude 4 quake by NASA's InSight lander, which is a four-year-old mission that was designed to study the geology of the red planet. InSight's onboard seismometer picked up the seismic waves that were generated by the impact from 2,150 miles away.

Astronomers who operate the Context Camera and Mars Color Imager aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter first detected the crater on February 11. The Context Camera also took images of the region where the meteorite crash-landed before and after the impact.

According to CNN, scientists later discovered that the event was one of the largest meteoroid strikes on Mars since the space agency began studying the red planet. The orbiter's captured images showed the blast zone of the crater, allowing scientists to further compare it with the epicenter of the quake that InSight detected.

Chunks of Ice

The impact of the meteorite also revealed chunks of ice under the surface of Mars, which were found buried closer to the warm Martian equator than any ice that has ever been detected on the red planet. In a statement, the orbital science operations lead for the orbit at Malin Space Systems in San Diego, Liliya Posiolova, said that the image of the meteor impact was unlike anything that has been seen before.

Posiolova noted that the team first saw the crater on February 11, 2022, while they were taking photos to complement an earlier photograph of the area. She noted that when the image came back, the team found it unusual, noting that the dust disturbance was massive.

The scientists then wondered if the dust disturbance was visible on their color imager camera, and went to take a look. It was at that time that the team noted debris in the area, said Posiolova. She also said that she remembered an email from NASA's InSight mission that talked about a recording of a "large seismic event" on Christmas Eve last year, USA Today reported.