Making an impact. ☄️ Last December, a meteoroid crashed into the surface of Mars, creating a crater roughly 490 feet (150 meters) wide—and sending shockwaves across the Red Planet. NASA's InSight lander "heard" the impact, which generated a magnitude 4 marsquake, and coordinated with our Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to capture photos of the crash's aftermath. Not only is this one of the largest craters ever observed forming in real time, its creation sprayed boulder-sized blocks of frozen water around the impact site, visible as white dots and streaks in this photo. Though we've known that ice lurks below the surface of Mars, this is the closest we've ever seen buried ice near the Martian equator. Water is both essential for human life and a key ingredient for resources like rocket fuel, making this a great discovery for future human missions to Mars. Image description: The bumpy, rocky, rust-red surface of Mars as seen from above. In the middle of the photo, a sloping impact crater...