A massive crater left by a meteoroid impact was discovered on Mars by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
The impact apparently occurred on December 24 last year when another NASA craft, the InSight lander detected a magnitude 4 quake on the Red Planet.
Having compared the images take by the Mars Reconnaissance Lander before and after that event, scientists were able to spot the crater in question which is located in the region known as Amazonis Planitia and measures about 150 meters across and 21 meters deep.
“It’s unprecedented to find a fresh impact of this size,” said Ingrid Daubar, planetary scientist from Brown University who leads InSight’s Impact Science Working Group. “It’s an exciting moment in geologic history, and we got to witness it.”
According to a statement released by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, this discovery is now believed to be “one of the largest craters ever witnessed forming any place in the solar system”.