Meteorite Hit Mars So Hard NASA Thought It Was a Quake

NASA’s InSight lander detected what appeared to have been a magnitude 4 marsquake on Christmas Eve last year, a powerful tremor that caught the attention of scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. Now, thanks to data collected by the space agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, researchers may have stumbled upon the cause: a powerful meteorite impact. The impact was powerful as well, leaving a crater almost 500 feet across and 70 feet deep behind in a region called the Amazonis Planitia. Some of the ejecta thrown by the impact flew as far as 23 miles away. The blast zone also happens to be very close to the planet’s equator, a region considered to be a great place for astronauts to visit because it’s relatively warm. . . .