NASA estimates 200 asteroids hit Mars every year

The North American Space Agency (NASA) has focused its efforts to study the surface of Mars in recent years. One of the most important instruments for this is the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) probe, which the agency uses to monitor the impacts of asteroids and comet fragments on the planet, as well as the resulting craters.

The agency has been specifically looking for craters at least half a meter in diameter. So far, with the help of MRO imagery, 248 new impact marks have been found on different sections of the planet's surface over the past decade.

Making a calculation based on the number of craters found on a small part of the planet's surface, NASA found that more than 200 small asteroids or small comet fragments crash into the planet each year. In order to calculate this frequency rate, the agency compared high-resolution images taken by MRO to find out when new craters appeared on the planet.

Image Source: NASAD According to NASA, the planet suffers more asteroid impacts from its much less dense atmosphere than Earth's. Thus, the small fragments are not completely burned during entry into the planet. For comparison, the space agency points out that the meteor that scared residents of Russia's Chelyabinsk region in early February was about 10 times larger than those that usually cause craters on the surface of Mars.

Finally, the space agency said the index would aid the calculation of the age of Mars and other planets and regions. A very interesting feature, as the red planet gets, on average, a new crater about the size of the state of Texas each year.