Two major meteorite impacts shed light on the interior of Mars

By studying seismic data and orbital observations linked to two major meteorite impacts at the end of 2021, the international teams of NASA's InSight and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter missions are refining their knowledge of the Martian planetary interior. Two studies published on 27 October in the journal Science, involving numerous co-authors from French institutions and laboratories, including the CNRS, the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, Université Paris Cité, and supported in particular by the CNES and the ANR, provide new constraints that make it possible to validate and refine the models of the planet's internal structure previously proposed, but also of the dynamics of the major impacts and the physics of atmospheric shock waves.