Watch out, Martians.
Meteorites slam into Mars five times more than planetary scientists thought, a finding published in the journal Nature Astronomy. This makes impacts on the Red Planet about a daily occurrence. A 26-foot-wide (8-meter) crater forms almost each day, and a nearly 100-foot (30-meter) crater is created once a month.
Previous estimates of these Martian impacts largely came from studying crater imagery on the moon and from Mars-orbiting craft. But unprecedented seismic data — detected by NASA’s now-defunct InSight lander — showed objects regularly impacting the surface.
“This rate was about five times higher than the number estimated from orbital imagery alone,” Géraldine Zenhäusern, a seismologist at ETH Zurich in Switzerland who co-led the research, said in a statement.
Support authors and subscribe to content
This is premium stuff. Subscribe to read the entire article.