Yusrah Seddiki May 23, 2014
Earth Science: Current Event   C Even

NASA mars weathercam helps find big new craters
This article discusses about how researchers have revealed the largest fresh meteor impact crater on the Red Planet. Images were captured by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance orbiter. The crater first appeared in March 2012, with a length half of a football filed. Researchers forecast that the impact that produced this crater was preceded by an outburst in the Martian sky which was triggered by intense friction between an incoming asteroid and the planet’s atmosphere. The air burst produced by this explosion and ground impact, darkened an area of Martian’s surface about 5 miles (8 kilometers) across. In the images taken of this crater, scientists are searching for evidence of dust storms and other observable weather events in these images.
On one of these images, scientist Cantor spotted an unassuming dim dot near the equator. He says “It looked usual, with rays emanating from a central spot”. After examining these images, it was revealed that the dark spot was present a year ago, however not five years ago. Ctx also revealed that the dark spot revealed by MARCI (high-resolution camera) is related to a new impact crater. Another camera reveals a dozen smaller craters near the two larger ones found in the CTX images. They were expected to be possibly generated by portions of exploding asteroids or secondary effects of material ejected from the main craters during the impact. HiRISE said that “The biggest crater is unusual, quite shallow compared to other fresh craters we gave observed”. According to data, the largest crater spans 159x143 feet (48.5x43.5 meters). Scientist McEwen approximates the impact object is measured to be 10 to 18 feet (3 to 5 meters) long. Which is less than a third of the estimated length of the asteroid that hit Earth’s atmosphere in Chelyabinsk. Craters happen to appear large on the surface of Mars is because mars has much not as much of an atmosphere compared to Earth. Studies of new impact craters on Mars yield valuable statistics.
Overall I thought this article was well written. It had enough information provided in order for the reader to understand the whole point of this article and topic. However if I were to criticize. I think that they should have included more dates, and the opinions of the researchers and scientists that have examined these craters.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140522162926.htm