Mars meteorite graveyard revealed!

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Lerato Khumalo

According to Science Daily, in the research using data from the seismic investigation vehicle InSight, which was launched on Mars by the US Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), it was calculated that 280-360 meteorites that form craters larger than 8 meters fall on Mars every year.

The researchers found that the meteorites showed seismic activity of around magnitude 3, but that this was much shorter than the earthquakes on Mars, and revealed that 80 activities previously categorized as earthquakes were caused by meteorite falls.

The data obtained by the researchers showed that at least one 8-meter crater forms on the surface of Mars every day and at least one 30-meter crater forms every month.

Geraldine Zenhausern, one of the authors of the study, stated that this number is approximately five times the number reached after the examination performed after imaging the orbit with a tomography scan alone.

Researcher Natalia Wojcicka said that the InSight research team found the seismic activities with the help of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) camera and calculated the size of the crater formed by the meteorite from the intensity and distance of the activity.

Wojcicka noted that they used this data to calculate the craters formed around the InSight vehicle in 1 year, and based on this result, they reached the average number of meteorites falling on the surface of Mars in a year.

The research was published in the journal “Nature”.