A team of international researchers analyzed the aftermath of Mars colliding with a colossal asteroid roughly 2.3 million years ago. The impact carved a 14-kilometer-wide crater into the Martian surface and spawned billions of smaller craters across the surrounding landscape. Their findings were published on the official gazette of Universities Research Association (USRA).
The central feature, named Corinto Crater, sits in Elysium Planitia, a broad region near Mars’s equator. Scientists estimate that asteroids with enough size to leave such marks strike neighboring planets on roughly a three-million-year cycle.
To examine Corinto and its environs, the researchers relied on data from a high-resolution imaging instrument and a context camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, enabling a detailed look at the crater’s setting and its extended geomorphology.
Evidence from the study shows that the asteroid’s fragments peppered the surrounding terrain with numerous smaller craters. Debris scattered as far as 1,850 kilometers from the initial impact point, creating distinctive spatial patterns that help reconstruct the event’s dynamics.
The team suggests that Corinto may be among the youngest large impact scars recorded on Mars to date, offering a rare snapshot of a relatively recent planetary transformation in the planet’s geological history.
Earlier Martian exploration revealed volcanic activity capable of producing structures taller than any terrestrial mountain range, underscoring Mars’s diverse geological evolution and the ongoing study of its surface processes.