Vast amounts of water from the shallow ocean, as well as sediments, would have been displaced, Rodriguez said, although most of the water returned to the ocean soon after the megatsunami reached its peak. The impact likely sent water vapor up into the atmosphere, which would have affected the Martian climate and potentially created snow or rain in the fallout. The results were similar to those of the Chicxulub impact on Earth, which created a crater that was initially 62 miles (100 kilometers) across and triggered a towering tsunami that traveled around the world. The 1.8-mile asteroid generated a tsunami that measured 820 feet (250 meters) tall once it reached land. On Earth, life always requires the presence of water to exist.”Īsteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs also triggered a global tsunamiĭuring simulations, both impacts created a crater with Pohl’s dimensions - as well as a megatsunami that reached 932 miles (1,500 kilometers) from the impact site. “The landing site selection needed to fulfill a critical requirement - the presence of extensive evidence of former surface water. “The lander was designed to seek evidence of extant life on the Martian surface, so to select a suitable landing site, the engineers and scientists at the time faced the arduous task of using some of the planet’s earliest acquired images, accompanied by Earth-based radar probing of the planet’s surface,” said lead study author Alexis Rodriguez, senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, via email. The interest in the potential for life on the red planet prompted scientists to select its northern equatorial region, Chryse Planitia, as the first Martian landing site for Viking I. The catastrophic event likely occurred when an asteroid slammed into the shallow Martian ocean - similar to the Chicxulub asteroid impact that wiped out dinosaurs on Earth 66 million years ago, according to researchers.įive years before the Viking I landing, NASA’s Mariner 9 spacecraft had orbited Mars, spotting the first landscapes on another planet that suggested evidence of ancient flood channels there. Now, new research suggests that the lander touched down where a Martian megatsunami deposited materials 3.4 billion years ago, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports. The mystery of the Viking landing site has long puzzled scientists, who believe an ocean once existed there. Those first images taken from the ground there showed a surprisingly boulder-strewn surface in the red planet’s northern equatorial region, rather than the smooth plains and flood channels expected based on images of the area taken from space. 'It's getting dark': 'Good Night Oppy' recounts the sudden death of a Mars rover
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