Listen to Space Rocks Crash Into Mars – Recorded by NASA's Insight Lander
An Anonymous Coward writes:
NASA's InSight lander has detected seismic waves from four space rocks that crashed on Mars in 2020 and 2021. These represent the first impacts detected by the spacecraft's seismometer since InSight touched down on the Red Planet in 2018. In fact, it also marks the first time seismic and acoustic waves from an impact have been detected on Mars.
[...] A meteoroid" is the term used for space rocks before they hit the ground. The first of the four confirmed meteoroids made the most dramatic entrance: It exploded into at least three shards that each left a crater behind after entering Mars' atmosphere on September 5, 2021.
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter then flew over the estimated impact site to confirm the location. The orbiter used its black-and-white Context Camera to reveal three darkened spots on the surface. After locating these spots, the orbiter's team used the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, or HiRISE, to get a color close-up of the craters (the meteoroid could have left additional craters on the surface, but they would be too small to see in HiRISE's images). See the images in the "Mars Crater Collage" below.
After three years of InSight waiting to detect an impact, those craters looked beautiful," said Ingrid Daubar of Brown University. She is a co-author of the paper and a specialist in Mars impacts.
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