Artificial Intelligence (AI) automates repetitive tasks beyond human capability, allowing people to focus on more strategic, high-impact work. It can analyze vast datasets, identifying patterns that might go unnoticed by humans. Additionally, AI operates continuously without the need for breaks or time constraints, ensuring round-the-clock efficiency in completing assigned tasks.
AI has just helped astronomers discover a new crater on the surface of Mars that has revealed a long-hidden secret. It turns out that meteoroids striking Mars produce seismic signals that can reach deeper into the planet than previously known. That’s the finding of a pair of papers published Monday in Geophysical Research Letters comparing Marsquake data recorded by NASA’s InSight lander and a newly spotted crater on the Red Planet.
The InSight team was able to pinpoint the locations of the quakes by comparing the seismic data to images from its camera. This allowed them to confirm 123 fresh craters visually. Like the one seen here, eight of these craters had never been reported before. The team also compared the seismic signal to a database of previous Mars impacts to tie the craters to their corresponding seismic events. They found that the quake’s energy reached deeper into the planet than expected, suggesting that a more direct pathway—a seismic highway—through the mantle is possible.
This new insight is critical for understanding the nature of Mars and its early climate. It is believed that Mars was once much warmer and wetter than the frozen desert it is today, but evidence for this is scarce.
It has been unclear if these periods of warmth and wetness were continuous or short-lived. But this discovery of a fresh crater, measuring 50 meters across, may be the first clue that Mars was habitable for millennia.
The researchers named the new crater Mursan after a city in Uttar Pradesh, India. The crater was found within the Lal Crater in the Tharsis region of the Red Planet and is located near a rift zone that is thought to be a source of lava.
The finding demonstrates the value of pairing data from multiple sources. The InSight team discovered this because it paired the seismic signals with images taken by the orbiter and because the crater appeared in both before-and-after imagery. This strategy has been employed to identify hundreds of other fresh impacts on Mars. Still, it is the first time such an analysis has been done to link an impact to a resulting crater directly. The study’s coauthors include scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. You can read more about this fascinating discovery on the InSight blog. This is the latest in a series of stories exploring how artificial intelligence transforms planetary science.