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Did an impact blast away half of the martian crust?

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The northern and southern hemispheres of Mars are topographically distinct. Crustal thickness analyses and numerical simulations suggest a giant impact just after the crust differentiated 4.4 billion years ago as a plausible cause for this dichotomy.

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Figure 1: Two halves of Mars.

J. ANDREWS-HANNA/NASA/MGS/MOLA

Figure 2: The two faces of the Moon.

NASA/JPL/USGS

Figure 3: A fresh crater on the primordial Mars.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. H. J. Melosh is at the Lunar and Planetary Lab, University of Arizona, Tucson Arizona 85721, USA. jmelosh@lpl.arizona.edu,

    H. J. Melosh

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  1. H. J. Melosh
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Melosh, H. Did an impact blast away half of the martian crust?. Nature Geosci 1, 412–414 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo237

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