Fresh Martian Crater Discovered by NASA's Mars Weather Camera

NASA's Mars weather camera has identified a fresh meteor impact crater measuring half the length of a football field.

The Martian crater that first appeared in March 2012, was captured by the space agency's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The orbiter captured both the before and after images of the carter.

The researchers believe that the crater formation was preceded by an explosion in the Martian sky triggered by friction between incoming asteroid and the planet's atmosphere. This event can be compared to the 2013 Russian Meteor that hit Chelyabinsk. The air dust and the ground impact together made a dark region on the Martian surface stretching about 5 miles across.

The orbiter has been involved in a systematic observation since 2006. In order to hunt for clues in dust storms and other weather events, researchers examined the everyday global coverage of the orbiter's weather-monitoring camera, the Mars Color Imager (MARCI).  Two month ago scientist Bruce Cantor noticed a dark region near the equator.

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

To verify the occurrence of the dark dot, the researchers checked previous images and soon learnt that the dark spot existed a year ago, and not five years ago. By referring images from 40 various dates the researchers finalized the date when the impact occurred.

The team revealed that the dark spot was not present through March 27,2012 and then it appeared before the daily imaging on March 28,2012.

On confirming the spot to be a fresh Martian crater, the team focused on the region. Compared to the other 400 fresh caters-causing impact on the Red Planet, that have been documented with both before and after images, this is the only one that has been found using MARCI imaging.

In 2012, the site of the new crater was scanned and photographed by telescopic Context Camera (CTX). In April 2014 CTX images, the two craters were spotted that were not there earlier, thus confirming that the dark spot located by MARCI was a fresh crater.

"Studies of fresh impact craters on Mars yield valuable information about impact rates and about subsurface material exposed by the excavations," said Leslie Tamppari, deputy project scientist for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. "The combination of HiRISE and CTX has found and examined many of them, and now MARCI's daily coverage has given great precision about when a significant impact occurred."