On Christmas Eve, a space rock slammed into Mars. A secret was revealed from NASA

A spacecraft landed on Mars on November 26, 2018, when NASA InSight mission made its way to the planet. The robotic lander touched down on the Martian surface with a smooth, balletic landing. It sent back a "beep" and a picture of its landing spot to mission control a little while later as if to announce, "I made it!" I was dancing at my desk alongside the InSight team as they cheered at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which was thousands of kilometers away. The project has uncovered amazing information on Mars' quakes and what the planet's core may look like. But due to dust obscuring its solar panels, the InSight mission is about to come to an end. The lander will no longer be able to beep to indicate that everything is well after a few weeks. Although the spacecraft still has a surprise for us before it departs. On December 24, Mars rumbled beneath InSight, and NASA scientists assumed it was simply another marsquake. A few thousand miles away, a space asteroid crashed into the surface of Mars, causing a magnitude 4-magnitude earthquake. Near the warm Martian equator, a sizable crater that the meteoroid left behind on the red planet revealed shimmering ice fragments. In the meantime, scientists put a microbe known as "Conan the Bacterium" through a Mars-like environment. The resilient organism's capacity to endure challenging circumstances led the researchers to hypothesize that there may be ancient microbial life dormant deep under the Martian surface. An unusual-looking lemur species known as an aye-aye was first observed digging around in its nose before licking its finger clean. Other nonhuman primates taste their own snot as well, but the creature can reach all the way back down its throat thanks to its extraordinarily long middle finger, as shown in a CT scan acquired by the researchers. The long digit of the nocturnal aye-aye is connected to death prophesies in its native Madagascar, according to local tradition. But scientists are hoping that people will see the importance of protecting this misunderstood and critically endangered animal.