The InSight mission’s seismograph detected the huge impact of a large meteorite on Mars
The seismograph of the InSight mission detected the huge impact of a large asteroid on March, an extremely rare event that has already improved our scientific knowledge of the red planet. The shock, which took place on December 24, 2021 (and no, it was not Santa’s sleigh), was confirmed by the MRO probe which noted the presence of a new crater on the surface of Mars 150 meters in diameter!
Beyond the extreme rarity of an event of this proportion, the power of the impact generated low frequency surface waves… which say a lot about the composition of the Martian crust. Indeed, these surface waves have a dispersion and a very particular speed relative to the depth. NASA scientists have been able to reconstruct an almost complete topography of the underlayer of Mars, up to 30 km deep! The seismic data from Insight has thus enabled an in-depth study of the difference in structure of the Martian crust between the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere of the red planet.
In the end, it seems that the crust of Mars is particularly dense, unlike the crustal region located just below Insight. The violent impact of the meteorite also revealed blocks of ice, which surprised scientists who did not think that ice was located so close to the surface of Mars.
