By “fresh,” scientists mean the crater is there since March 2012

May 23, 2014 07:13 GMT  ·  By

It might be a while until us humans finally get the chance to walk on Mars, but, as it turns out, visitors are the last thing that the Red Planet is missing. On the contrary, asteroids are quite fond on it and drop by as often as they get the chance.

In fact, it was in March 2012 that one such celestial body paid Mars a visit and left something for the Red Planet to remember it by: an impact crater measuring about 159 by 143 feet (48.5 by 43.5 meters) across.

According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the United States (NASA, for short), this means that the area that this fresh impact crater on Mars covers is the equivalent of half the length of a football field.

It is estimated that the object that created this crater measured about 10 to 18 feet (approximately 3 to 5 meters) in length. This makes it about three times smaller than the asteroid that entered our planet's atmosphere near Chelyabinsk, Russia last year.

Specialists explain that, despite its not-at-all-impressive size, the asteroid managed to give birth to this fairly big crater due to the fact that Mars has less atmosphere than Earth and is, therefore, more vulnerable to collisions with celestial bodies.

Interestingly enough, the presence of this crater on the Red Planet's surface was documented with the help of before-and-after images, NASA explains on its website. Thus, the crater was discovered by analyzing images taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

According to Bruce Cantor, the crater was not visible in images taken up to March 27, 2012, but it was present in images obtained starting March 28, 2012. Hence, it is safe to assume that the impact occurred sometime between these two dates.

“It wasn't what I was looking for. I was doing my usual weather monitoring and something caught my eye. It looked usual, with rays emanating from a central spot,” Bruce Cantor said in a statement.

Before-and-after images have for some time now been used to documented changes in the makeup and appearance of the Red Planet's surface. Still, researchers say that this fresh impact crater is the biggest structure of its kind to have until now been discovered using this technology.

Commenting on the importance to keep tabs on such events, scientist Leslie Tamppari with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California said, “Studies of fresh impact craters on Mars yield valuable information about impact rates and about subsurface material exposed by the excavations.”