The collision, which dates back to December 24, 2021, dug a crater about 150 meters in diameter and 20 meters deep.
Le Monde with afp
For uninformed ears, one minute recording is only a vague echo, blurred. For space specialists, sound is historic. NASA published, Thursday, October 27, the audio capture of an earthquake observed on March, December 24, 2021, after a meteorite struck the surface of the red planet.
our @nasainsight March Lander “Heard” Seismic Signals While Our March Recognition Orbiter Captured Images Of The I… https://t.co/8a9ojw5iuw
The tremors, of magnitude 4, were detected by the insight probe and its seismometer, posed on Mars almost four years ago, some 3,500 kilometers from the place of the impact. The origin of this Martian tremor was only confirmed in a second step, by the vessel named Mars Recognition Orbiter (MRO). In orbit around the planet, he took pictures of the crater newly formed within twenty-four hours following the event.
The image is impressive: blocks of ice have been projected on the surface, and a crater approximately 150 meters in diameter and 20 meters deep was dug. The biggest ever observed since the commissioning of the MRO orbiter, sixteen years ago. Even if the impacts of meteorite on Mars are not uncommon, “we would never have thought of seeing something so big,” said on Thursday at a press conference Ingrid Daubar, who works on the insight and mro missions .
12 -meter meteorite
The researchers believe that the meteorite itself should do around 12 meters – which on earth would have led it to disintegrate in the atmosphere. “It is quite simply the biggest impact of meteorite on the ground that has been listened to since we have made science with seismographers or seismometers,” explained to the France-Presse Philippe Lognonné agency, professor in planetology having Participated in two studies from these observations, published Thursday in the journal Science.
The information collected must make it possible to refine the knowledge of the interior of Mars, and the history of his training. The presence of ice, in particular, is “surprising”, underlined Ingrid Daubar, also co -author of the two studies. “This is the hottest point on Mars, closest to Ecuador, where we saw ice.”
In addition to the scientific interest of this discovery in the study of the Martian climate, the presence of water at this latitude could prove to be “very useful” for future explorers, said Lori Glaze, director of planetary sciences at the NASA. “We would like to land astronauts as close to the equator as possible,” she said, due to warmer temperatures. However, the ice present on site could then be transformed into water or oxygen.
1,300 “Mars tremors”
The impact of the meteorite was powerful enough to generate both volume waves (spreading to the nucleus) and surface waves (crossing the planet’s crust horizontally), thus making it possible to study in Detail The internal structure of March. The crust on which Insight is thus proved to be less dense than that crossed from the place of the collision.
As expected, the insight probe works today in slow motion because of the dust that has accumulated on its solar panels. The contact will probably be lost in “about four to eight weeks,” said Bruce Banerdt, of the NASA laboratory propulsion on Thursday, who said he was “sad” but welcomed the success of the mission, which will have detected more than 1,300 “March tremors”.