Christmas came a little early for NASA's InSight mission last December when the lander detected a massive quake on Mars. A space rock slammed into Mars on December 24, creating a crater and revealing ice buried near the Martian equator.
Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. Christmas came a little early for NASA’s InSight mission last December when the lander detected a massive quake on Mars. Now, scientists know what caused the red planet to rumble. A meteoroid slammed into Mars 2,174 miles away from the lander and created a fresh impact crater on the Martian surface.
The images captured by the orbiter, along with seismic data recorded by InSight, make the impact one of the largest craters in our solar system ever observed as it was created. Mars is littered with massive craters, but they’re much older than any mission to explore the red planet. “It’s unprecedented to find a fresh impact of this size,” said Ingrid Daubar, InSight impact science lead at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, in a statement.
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