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As each year, more than two hundred asteroids and comets crash on the surface of the Red Planet without really leaving a legacy, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft, located in orbit 255 km from Earth. altitude, observed in April a very unusual impact crater.
In addition to being remarkable for its size and its traces of impact, the trace of the collision denotes above all its astonishing colors, a mixture of blue and black contrasting with the warm shades of the planet. According to researchers at the University of Arizona, who badyzed the images, the blue tone could be water ice that, lying under a thin layer of dust, was exposed at the time of the collision. To see the crater image in HD, it's here.
Photograph of the famous impact crater © Nasa, JPL, University of Arizona
15 to 16 meters long, far more than any crater observed so far by the US space agency, the crater was caused by a fragment of about 150 centimeters in diameter, large enough not to be disintegrated by the fine Martian atmosphere. Unlike other celestial bodies that have partially burned and form a multitude of holes on impact, it has the effect of a bullet.
KABOOM! Before and after images of a meteorite forming a brand new impact crater on Mars. Sometime between 18 Feb 2017 and 20 March 2019. pic.twitter.com/TWXtUoP5NA
– Peter Grindrod (@Peter_Grindrod) June 12, 2019
It is at the equator of Mars, not far from the famous Valles Marineris, that the impact took place. The researchers estimated that the collision occurred between September 2016 and February 2019, without further clarification. This is the first time, in thirteen years of observation of the Red Planet in the framework of the MRO mission, that such a major phenomenon is occurring.
twitter makes his hole
The impact crater is so unique that it has inspired more than one. If most Internet users have marveled, some have pointed to the similarities, say "anatomical" cavity with a very specific part of the human body. What to put back feet on Earth with a joke a little muddy.
Yeaaaaa, so I thought this was something else at first glance.https: //t.co/wMaE2R5sQr
– Aaron Pauley (@aaronpauley) June 19, 2019
"At first glance, I really thought it was something else."
Is it me or does Mars crater look like a beat up badhole. pic.twitter.com/GlawBfIfXJ
– Scott (@ scott12375) June 17, 2019
More explicit (less subtle), this anglophone surfer that we will not translate.
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