In a new study, planetary researchers used global and high-resolution orbital imaging to discover a fresh, 21.5-m (71-foot) impact crater that appeared at the same time as one of the marsquakes detected by NASA’s InSight lander; this means the seismometer detected a meteoroid strike rather than geological activity within the planet. In an associated study, they scanned through a large amount of orbital image data and identified 123 impact craters that formed between December 2018 and December 2022, 49 of which might also have been recorded by the NASA InSight lander’s seismometer.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!
Charalambous et al. associate a new 21.5-m Mars impact crater in the tectonically active Cerberus Fossae region with InSight’s seismic event, S0794a. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona.
NASA’s InSight lander set the first seismometer on Mars, detecting more than 1,300 marsquakes, which are produced by shaking deep inside the planet (caused by rocks cracking under heat and pressure) and by space rocks striking the surface.
By observing how seismic waves from those quakes change as they travel through the planet’s crust, mantle, and core, scientists get a glimpse into Mars’ interior, as well as a better understanding of how all rocky worlds form, including Earth and its Moon.
Researchers have in the past taken images of new impact craters and found seismic data that matches the date and location of the craters’ formation.
But the two new studies represent the first time a fresh impact has been correlated with shaking detected in Cerberus Fossae, an especially quake-prone region of Mars that is 1,640 km (1,019 miles) from InSight.
The impact crater is 21.5 m in diameter and much farther from InSight than scientists expected, based on the quake’s seismic energy.
The Martian crust has unique properties thought to dampen seismic waves produced by impacts, and the new analysis of the Cerberus Fossae impact led them to conclude that the waves it produced took a more direct route through the planet’s mantle.
InSight’s team will now have to reassess their models of the composition and structure of Mars’ interior to explain how impact-generated seismic signals can go that deep.
“We used to think the energy detected from the vast majority of seismic events was stuck traveling within the Martian crust,” said InSight team member Dr. Constantinos Charalambous, a researcher at Imperial College London.
“This finding shows a deeper, faster path — call it a seismic highway — through the mantle, allowing quakes to reach more distant regions of the planet.”
The researchers also searched for craters within roughly 3,000 km (1,864 miles) of InSight’s location, hoping to find some that formed while the lander’s seismometer was recording.
By comparing before-and-after images from the Context Camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) over a range of time, they found 123 fresh craters to cross-reference with InSight’s data; 49 of those were potential matches with quakes detected by the lander’s seismometer.
“We thought Cerberus Fossae produced lots of high-frequency seismic signals associated with internally generated quakes, but this suggests some of the activity does not originate there and could actually be from impacts instead,” Dr. Charalambous said.
The findings also highlight how researchers are harnessing AI to improve planetary science by making better use of all the data gathered by NASA and ESA missions.
“Now we have so many images from the Moon and Mars that the struggle is to process and analyze the data,” said InSight team member Dr. Valentin Bickel, a researcher at the University of Bern.
“We’ve finally arrived in the big data era of planetary science.”
The two new papers appear in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
_____
V.T. Bickel et al. 2025. New Impacts on Mars: Systematic Identification and Association With InSight Seismic Events. Geophysical Research Letters 52 (3): e2024GL109133; doi: 10.1029/2024GL109133
Constantinos Charalambous et al. 2025. New Impacts on Mars: Unraveling Seismic Propagation Paths Through a Cerberus Fossae Impact Detection. Geophysical Research Letters 52 (3): e2024GL110159; doi: 10.1029/2024GL110159
