It was only one. And it created about 1,000 million small craters at distances of up to almost 1,900 kilometers. The incredible crater of Mars was studied at the LV Annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas. It’s called Corinth. It is located north of the equator of the Red Planet.
It is estimated to be 2.34 million years old. He’s pretty massive for being so young. The average time between impacts of its size is around 3 million years. It would be the most recent crater of its size on Mars.
Tracking trajectories
The interest in the Corinth crater lies in the fact that it has an extensive “ray system.” That means a significant amount of ejecta was ejected from the impact site. It created “rays” from the central point of impact and can be seen on a map of the planet’s surface, Universe Today reports.
The Corinto crater is about 14 km in diameter and 1 km deep. Its inner basin is filled with other smaller craters that were produced after the impact.
Following the trajectory of this ejecta a few million years later is not easy. The scientists used data collected by HiRISE and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) Context Camera (CTX). They analyzed the characteristics of the smaller craters surrounding the main crater Corinth. They were looking for craters caused by ejecta rather than by an interplanetary impactor.
Millions and millions
They grouped the different types of ejecta craters they found into five different “facies.” They focused on how far they were from the main crater. Each facies has its distinct characteristics. For example, Facies 0, the closest to the main crater, is semicircular. It does not appear to have ejections or has very distinct borders. On the other hand, Facies 3 craters are long and narrow rather than semicircular. This suggests that something went into creating them and they have appeared very bright in the images.
The incredible crater on Mars produced nearly 1 billion secondary impact craters larger than 10 meters. And these secondary craters appear up to 1,850 km away. It is the most ‘shocking’ of the recent Martian craters in terms of the large number and distance of its ejecta.
