Image credit: NASA
Due to its thin atmosphere and proximity to the solar system's asteroid belt, Mars is more vulnerable to meteorite impacts than Earth. Recently, with the help of the InSight Mars rover, scientists have gained a more comprehensive understanding of this feature of Mars.
According to reports from Reuters and the Associated Press, researchers reported on September 19, local time, that the”Insight” spacecraft detected seismic waves and sound waves generated by four meteorites hitting Mars, and then calculated the location of the craters they left, which is For the first time, scientists have made such measurements outside of Earth.
The researchers describe the basic conditions of the four meteorites. One will land on Mars in 2020, and the other three will land on Mars in 2021; they are relatively modest in size, weighing about 200 kilograms and about 50 centimeters in diameter, leaving a crater about 7.2 meters wide. Their landing sites are between about 85 kilometers and 290 kilometers from InSight's location. One of them landed and exploded into at least three fragments, each of which left its own crater.
