Crater researchers are exploring Mars from far away

Credit: NASA / Jet Propulsion Laboratory / University of Arizona

What can the effects of space teach us about the Red Planet?

NASA’s Perseverance spacecraft was launched last week on a mission to collect the first Mars samples returned to Earth. To achieve this, they would have to install a precise landing on the autopilot – and then figure out how to pull a more accurate takeoff.

But the spacecraft is not the only thing to land on Mars. They are also regularly destroyed by rocks from outer space – and this landing, while more messy, can tell us just as much about what Mars really looks like.

Move Mars

Andrea Rajcic has a Ph.D. candidate in Curtin, trying to help NASA discover the effects of a meteorite on Mars using seismometers on the Insight spacecraft.

“We expected many seismic events to occur due to meteorites and bombardment,” Andrea says.

They found that when something collides with the surface of Mars, the effect must appear on the Earthquake or Mars earthquake detectors. To be discovered, the effect must be large enough and close enough to the ground vehicle.

Until now, they hadn’t discovered anything – not even an impact from last year that was only 40 km away. The surface of Mars looks better than shock absorbers than anyone thought.

“This also helped us understand more about Mars, because it differs from what we expected based on Earth and the moon,” Andrea says.

The history of the pit

But the new effects are not the only ones that can teach us more about Mars.

“In planetary science, we estimate the age of the surface by looking at the number of craters it contains. Therefore, the more craters we have, the older the crust is,” Andrea says.

Here on Earth, forces such as winds, volcanoes, earthquakes, and the slow movement of tectonic plates tend to erase all butts of the largest craters. Scientists on Mars are aware that all these processes are still taking place.

“Mars is not actually dead as people previously thought,” Andrea says.

But Mars has a thinner atmosphere, less gravity pulling things down, and less seismic activity. This means that these craters last longer, and this allows scientists to date different parts of the planet.

“So, we know, for example, that the southeastern part of Mars is older than the northern plains, because it contains more craters,” Andrea says.

“But is this division caused by tectonics or not? We do not know. So there are still many open questions about the geology of Mars.”

free samples

And the pits are also responsible for bringing our only samples of Mars rocks.

A large enough explosion could detonate small pieces of Mars all the way to space and back to Earth. Once they’re here, they’re part of the puzzle, too.

Some team members find and collect those Martian meteorites. Others, like Ravi Battle, analyze those rocks to see what they are made of. Once they know this, they can start tracking its journey through the Solar System.

“What Ravi reveals in a rock, our colleagues try to see in the spectral images so that they can find out the source of these rocks on Mars,” says Andrea.

One planet, two planets, a red planet, a blue planet

There is a lot of investigative work to be done from a distance. As always, it can teach us a lot about our planet. Earth and Mars are formed in the same solar system, from the same substance. Just like siblings, what happens to one of you can tell you a lot about what is happening to the other.

“We usually think of Mars as Earth,” Andrea says, “but in the distant future. So, what is happening now on Mars may happen on Earth.”

“Some of the processes we cannot comprehend on Earth today may be just because we don’t understand what happened on Mars.”

Mars’ final mission of 2020 is preparing for launch from Florida

This article first appeared on Particle, a science news website based in Scitech, Perth, Australia. Read the original article.

Quote: Crater investigators are exploring Mars from afar (2020, August 6) retrieved August 6, 2020 from https://phys.org/news/2020-08-crater-explore-mars-afar.html

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