Nasa space probes document big impacts on Mars

Space probes have witnessed a big impact crater being formed on Mars - the largest in the Solar System ever caught in the act of excavation.

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A van-sized object dug out a 150m-wide bowl on the Red Planet, hurling debris up to 35km (19 miles) away.

In more familiar terms, that's a crater roughly one-and-a-half times the size of London's Trafalgar Square.

And its blast zone would fit neatly in the area inside the UK capital's orbital motorway, the M25.

Scientists detected the event using the seismometer on the US space agency's InSight lander. The probe picked up the ground vibrations.

Confirmation came from follow-up imagery acquired by Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). This satellite routinely pictures the planet and could produce the before-and-after proof of a major surface disturbance, corresponding to the exact timing and in the expected direction and distance (3,500km) from InSight.

"This is the biggest new crater we've ever seen," said Dr Ingrid Daubar from Brown University. "It's about 500ft wide, or about two city blocks across, and even though meteorites are hitting the planet all the time, this crater is more than 10 times larger than the typical new craters we see forming on Mars.

"We thought a crater this size might form somewhere on the planet once every few decades, maybe once a generation, so it was very exciting to be able to witness this event."