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There are plenty of craters on Mars, especially when compared to Earth. That is primarily thanks to the lack of weathering forces and strong plate tectonics that disrupt the formations of such impacts on our home planet. However, not all impact craters on Mars are directly caused by asteroid impacts. Many of them are caused by the ejecta from an asteroid impact falling back to the planet. One recent study showed how impactful this can be \u2013 it concludes that a single large impact crater on Mars created over two billion other smaller craters up to almost 2000 km away.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n The study, released at the 55th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas, focuses on a crater called Corinto. It\u2019s located in Elysium Planitia, only about 17 degrees north of the Red Planet\u2019s equator. It\u2019s a relatively young crater by Martian standards, with the scientists\u2019 best estimate of its age being around 2.34 million years ago. It\u2019s pretty massive for being that young, though, as the average time between impacts of its size is around 3 million years. As such, the scientists think it might be the most recent crater of its size on Mars.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not why it\u2019s interesting, though. It has an extensive \u201cray system\u201d. That means that a significant amount of ejecta was cast out from the impact site and landed elsewhere on the planet, creating \u201crays\u201d from the central impact point that can be seen on a map of the planet\u2019s surface even today.<\/p>\n \n