By: Jingwei Zhao

In late December of 2021, scientists witnessed a magnitude four quake on Mars. They originally had no idea what could have caused the event, but recently this mesmerizing mystery has finally been revealed.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted a never-seen-before crater on the red planet in February. Researchers put the two and two together and realized that a meteor had struck Mars. The large rock is believed to be 16 to 39 feet long in diameter. It would have burned up in Earth’s atmosphere, but it didn’t on Mars because of the thin atmosphere. The crater is 492-feet wide and 70-feet deep. It is certainly not the largest crater on Mars, but this is the largest crater formed since NASA started observing Mars.

“It’s unprecedented to find a fresh impact of this size. It’s an exciting moment in geologic history, and we got to witness it,” said Ingrid Daubar, leader of InSight’s Impact Science Working Group. Despite the incredible moment, what really stole the show during this tremor was that the meteor uncovered large amounts of ice buried near the planet’s equator. Chunks of ice have been found before, but none have been found anywhere close to the planet’s equator until this one. Lori Glaze, NASA’s director of planetary science, is very excited about this discovery. She imagines, “…in planning for future human exploration of Mars, we’d want to land the astronauts as near to the equator as possible, and having access to ice at these lower latitudes, that ice can be converted into water, oxygen, or hydrogen. That could be really useful.”