Professor of Mathematics

Paata Ivanisvili

Department of Mathematics, University of California, Irvine

Candidate 6: Twin dark spot on the plains of Elysium Planitia

Strong · roughly 75%

Two CTX close-ups of the same 500 by 500 m of plains in Elysium Planitia, from January 2008 and December 2024. An older dark spot on the right is in both; a pair of small dark spots near the arrow is present only in 2024. — The same 500 × 500 m in January 2008 and December 2024, under the same sun. The older spot on the right is in both images; the new pair is at the arrow. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

What changed. Two small dark spots, each about 20 m across and 35 m apart, appeared together on smooth plains between 2008 and 2024. An older dark spot nearby shows clearly in the earliest images, so those images would have caught the pair.

Why it may be a new impact. Two spots appearing at once is what happens when a meteoroid breaks in two in the thin Martian air.

Location: 6.089° N, 157.220° E
Absent: 3 October 2006, 4 December 2006 and 27 January 2008
Present: 11 August 2024, 22 December 2024 and 16 December 2025
Size: Two dark spots, each about 20 m across, 35 m apart
Confidence: Strong candidate; roughly 75% that it is a new impact.
Caveat: It lies outside every footprint of the high-resolution HiRISE camera. It lies in the area of a catalogue of new impacts near the InSight lander (Bickel et al. 2025) that could not be downloaded, so it can only be inferred that the catalogue does not list it. Like every candidate here, it is unconfirmed: see the caveat.