Two years ago, the DART spacecraft deliberately collided with Dimorph, a moon of the Didim asteroid, to test the possibility of deflecting the celestial body using kinetic impact technology. The impact was so powerful that DART not only changed the object’s shape and orbit, but also “stirred up” the asteroid, causing a cloud of dust and rock to form.

Marco Fenucci, a researcher at the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Near-Earth Object Coordination Center, calculated that the asteroid’s debris has significant dimensions. They do not threaten Earth, but they can fall on the surface of Mars and create huge craters there.

However, a meteor shower on Mars will occur in six thousand years at the latest. Therefore, these meteors may harm the colonists of the Red Planet in the distant future.