NASA’s InSight ‘Hears’ Its First Meteoroid Impacts on Mars – NASA Mars Exploration

The Mars lander’s seismometer has picked up vibrations from four separate impacts in the past two years.

NASA’s InSight lander has detected seismic waves from four space rocks that crashed on Mars in 2020 and 2021. Not only do these represent the first impacts detected by the spacecraft’s seismometer since InSight touched down on the Red Planet in 2018, it also marks the first time seismic and acoustic waves from an impact have been detected on Mars.

A new paper published Monday in Nature Geoscience details the impacts, which ranged between 53 and 180 miles (85 and 290…