The agency’s lander felt the ground shake during the impact while
cameras aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted the yawning new
crater from space.
NASA’s
InSight lander recorded a magnitude 4 marsquake last Dec. 24, but
scientists learned only later the cause of that quake: a meteoroid
strike estimated to be one of the biggest seen on Mars since NASA began
exploring the cosmos. What’s more, the meteoroid excavated boulder-size
chunks of ice buried closer to the Martian equator than ever found
before – a discovery with implications for NASA’s future plans to send
astronauts to the Red Planet.
Scientists
determined the quake resulted from a meteoroid impact when they looked
at before-and-after images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
and spotted a new, yawning crater. Offering a rare opportunity to see
how a large impact shook the ground on Mars, the event and its effects
are detailed in two papers published Thursday, Oct. 27, in the journal
Science.
The meteoroid is estimated to have
spanned 16 to 39 feet (5 to 12 meters) – small enough that it would
have burned up in Earth’s atmosphere, but not in Mars’ thin atmosphere,
which is just 1% as dense as our planet’s. The impact, in a region
called Amazonis Planitia, blasted a crater roughly 492 feet (150 meters)
across and 70 feet (21 meters) deep. Some of the ejecta thrown by the
impact flew as far as 23 miles (37 kilometers) away.
With
images and seismic data documenting the event, this is believed to be
one of the largest craters ever witnessed forming any place in the solar
system. Many larger craters exist on the Red Planet, but they are
significantly older and predate any Mars mission. …
The one-way trip should help scientists crack the planet’s mysteries.
NASA scientists are preparing to paint the most detailed picture to
date of the atmosphere of Venus when the aptly named DAVINCI — or Deep
Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble Gases, Chemistry, and Imaging —
mission drops a probe to the planet’s surface.
When the 3-foot-wide (0.9 meters) descent sphere of the DAVINCI mission takes its one-way parachute trip to Venus’
surface in the early 2030s, it will be carrying the VASI (Venus
Atmospheric Structure Investigation) instrument along with five other
instruments. VASI will collect data regarding the temperature, pressure
and winds of Venus’ atmosphere as it makes its hellish descent and enters the planet’s crushing lower atmosphere.
“There
are actually some big puzzles about the deep atmosphere of Venus,”
Ralph Lorenz, the science lead for the VASI instrument and a planetary
scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in
Maryland, said in a statement.
“We don’t have all the pieces of that puzzle and DAVINCI will give us
those pieces by measuring the composition at the same time as the
pressure and temperature as we get near the surface.“ …
Marriage Vow–The Witch’s Cauldron!, A woman who was murdered by her husband for her money comes back from the dead to fulfill her wifely role in a zombified way. The Shadow Knows–The Vault of Horror!, A man murders his wife making it look like a suicide in order to marry a wealthy woman. Spoiled–Haunt of Fear, Comes The Dawn!–The Crypt of Terror
