The discovery of the new largest crater on Mars may be the last. The InSight probe ends

As we briefly reported in late October, the cosmic body’s impact also ejected boulder-sized chunks of ice that had hitherto been buried closer to the Martian equator than ice had ever been identified there.

The discovery could have implications for NASA’s future plans to send astronauts to our neighboring planet, Reuters reported last week, which also shared the video.

Scientists confirmed that the quake was the result of a meteorite impact when they looked at the “before” and “after” images taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which studies the red planet from orbit, and they identified a new crater.

The original meteoroid is estimated to have been between 5 and 12 meters in size, small enough to burn in the Earth’s atmosphere, but not in the thin atmosphere of Mars.

The impact in an area called Amazonis Planitia created a crater 150 meters in diameter and 21 meters deep. Some of the objects ejected from the impact flew up to 37 kilometers away.

Of course, there are many larger craters on Mars, but they are significantly older and precede any mission to the red planet.

According to researcher Ingrid Daubar of American Brown University, who leads the working groups of the InSight probe, these results are unprecedented. “This is an exciting time in geological history and we are witnessing it,” she boasts, according to Reuters.

However, InSight itself has experienced a drastic drop in performance in recent months due to the dust that has settled on its solar panels. The spacecraft is expected to shut down within the next five weeks or so, ending the science mission.

The InSight mission to Mars was originally scheduled to last one Earth year. It ends up running four times longer, which can be considered a hit.

NASA has released what may be the last image taken by the spacecraft and sent back to Earth (tweeted by the planetary scientist above).

“The day is coming when I retire and my nearly four Earth years (more than two years on Mars) in the study of the red planet will end,” reads a post (below) on the InSight Twitter account.

Z NASA press releases As a result, the InSight team has one last major task ahead of them: to save all data collected by the probe.

Since landing on Elysium Planitia in the planet’s northern hemisphere in November 2018, InSight instruments have recorded 1,318 Martian earthquakes, many of which were caused by minor impacts from space bodies.

As part of his mission, he explores the interior and seismic activity of Mars. The probe also includes a seismograph, which recorded seismic waves caused by the impact of foreign bodies.

Every year, thousands of meteoroids enter the atmosphere of our planet Earth. Some of them will shine like meteors in the night sky, others will hit the earth’s surface like meteorites. In September of this year, it was reported that experts had for the first time thoroughly mapped the impact of an alien body on another planet when they examined data also obtained from the InSight probe operating on Mars. They detected relatively cool craters there using shock waves caused by space “pebbles” hitting the Martian surface.

Such research helps scientists not only get a better idea of ​​how often the red planet is “whipped” by meteoroids, but it should also hone their knowledge of the internal structure of our planetary neighbor.