NASA’s InSight lander recorded a magnitude 4 marsquake on Dec. 24, 2021, but scientists only recently discovered that the cause was a meteoroid strike. The impact created one of the largest craters ever witnessed forming in the solar system, spanning 492 feet across and 70 feet deep. The meteoroid is estimated to have been between 16 and 39 feet in size and excavated boulder-sized chunks of ice buried closer to the Martian equator than ever before. The event and its effects are detailed in two papers published in the journal Science. The discovery has implications for NASA’s future plans to send astronauts to Mars, as subsurface ice could be a vital resource for astronauts.
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