NASA’s InSight lander recorded a magnitude 4 marsquake last Christmas Eve. Scientists only later learned the cause of that quake: a meteoroid strike estimated to be one of the biggest seen on Mars since NASA began exploring the cosmos. What’s more, the meteoroid excavated boulder-size chunks of ice buried closer to the Martian equator than ever found before a discovery with implications for NASA’s future plans to send astronauts to the Red Planet. Scientists determined the quake resulted from a meteoroid impact when they looked at before-and-after images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and spotted a new, yawning crater a rare opportunity to see how a large impact shook the ground on Mars. The impact, in a region called Amazonis Planitia, blasted a crater roughly 492 feet (150 meters) across and 70 feet (21 meters) deep. Some of the ejecta thrown by the impact flew as far as 23 miles (37 kilometres) away. With images and seismic data documenting the event, this is believed to be one of the largest craters ever witnessed forming any place in the solar system.