By 
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)(asteroid)
A huge asteroid that strongly dented Mars’ surface roughly 2.3 million years before also created 2 billion smaller craters on the Mars as it shattered, a research finds.
The main impact crater, named Corinto, measures around 8.7 miles (14 kilometers) in diameter and is present in Elysium Planitia — a broad plain that straddles Mars‘ equator. Asteroids which are able to leave such a gigantic mark are expected to only hit into the Martian surface every 3 million years or so, means Corinto may be the earliest crater of its dimension on the Red Planet, scientists showed at the 55th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas earlier this month.
“Corinto is a latest impact crater in Elysium Panitia that created one of the most extensive systems of…secondary craters on Mars,” the scientists mentioned in a research. released at the conference.
The object that made Corinto pockmarked the surrounding landscape with little craters, as fragments splintered off and shot outward in ray-like patterns still visible today, according to the study. These secondary craters are concentrated in an area to the south and southwest of Corinto, with the farthest flung ejecta landing 1,150 miles (1,850 km) from the main crater.
The scientists grouped the secondary craters into four “facies,” based on their shape and distance from the main crater. Facies 0 craters, those nearest to Corinto, seemed semicircular, whereas the farthest away, Facies 3 craters, were long and narrow.
“The noticed differentiation…with distance from the crater likely come from variations in impact velocity and size of ejecta,” the scientists observed in the research.
The flight way of the fragments that broke off the impactor, together with the lightly elliptical shape of the main crater, showed the asteroid came from the north and hit down on Red planet at an oblique angle of 30 to 45 degrees, as per the research. The scientists also posit the asteroid was created from “strong, competent basalt.”
Corinto’s internal surface, which sits 0.6 mile (1 km) below the surrounding Martian landscape, features a large number of pits that recommends the area was covered in water ice when it was hit. The pits, which are all tinier than 660 feet (200 meters) across, perhaps made as a consequence of intense degassing (the removal of dissolved gases from a liquid) when the water ice was superheated upon impact, the scientists recommended.
