This mosaic is made up of more than 100 images captured by NASA's Viking 1 orbiter, which operated around Mars from 1976 to 1980. The scar across the center of the planet is the vast Valles Marineris canyon system.Meteorite impacts pepper Mars at a rate up to 10 times more frequent than previous estimates, according to two new research papers that identified the seismic shock waves of these impacts detected by NASA's now-defunct Mars InSight lander.
"This size impact, we would expect to happen maybe once every couple of decades, maybe even once in a lifetime, but here we have two of them that are just over 90 days apart," Ingrid Dauber of Brown University, who led one of the studies, said in aBoth studies utilized the seismometer instrument, SEIS, on InSight to detect the impacts. InSight recorded seismic data for four years, during which time SEIS was.
Planetary surfaces don't come with a receipt saying how long ago they formed, or when they were last covered by lava. Instead, scientists must calculate surface ages based on how many craters cover those surfaces; the more craters there are, the older the surface must be. We can see a classic example of this on.
"By using seismic data to better understand how often meteorites hit Mars and how these impacts change its surface, we can start piecing together a timeline of the Red Planet's geological history and evolution," said Wojcicka in a."You could think of it as a sort of 'cosmic clock' to help us date Martian surfaces and, maybe further down the line, other planets in the solar system.
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