Related papers: Mercurian impact ejecta: Meterorites and mantle

The intensity and effects of early impact bombardment on the major satellites of the giant planets during an episode of giant planet migration is still poorly known. We use a combination of dynamical N-body and Monte Carlo simulations to…

High-speed impact ejecta at velocities comparable to the impact velocity are expected to contribute to material transport between planetary bodies and deposition of ejecta far from the impact crater. We investigated the behavior of…

An ancient Venusian rock could constrain that planet's history, and reveal the past existence of oceans. Such samples may persist on the Moon, which lacks an atmosphere and significant geological activity. We demonstrate that if Venus'…

The final stage of planet formation is dominated by collisions between planetary embryos. The dynamics of this stage determine the orbital configuration and the mass and composition of planets in the system. In the solar system, late giant…

The MESSENGER mission sought to discover what physical processes determined Mercury's high metal to silicate ratio. Instead, the mission has discovered multiple anomalous characteristics about our innermost planet. The lack of FeO and the…

We examine the conditions under which material from the martian moons Phobos and Deimos could reach our planet in the form of meteorites. We find that the necessary ejection speeds from these moons (900 and 600 m/s for Phobos and Deimos…

Boulders on the surfaces of planets, satellites and small bodies, as well as their geological associations, provide important information about surface processes. We analyzed all available images of the surface of Mercury that have…

(1) Ceres, the largest reservoir of water in the main-belt, was recently visited by the Dawn spacecraft that revealed several areas bearing H$_2$O-ice features. Independent telescopic observations showed a water exosphere of currently…

While the floors of deep lunar craters are largely shielded from solar radiation and thus provide an ideal thermal environment for water ice accumulation, meteoroids on highly inclined orbits can easily access permanently shadowed regions…

The absence of planets interior to Mercury continues to puzzle terrestrial planet formation models, particularly when contrasted with the relatively high derived occurrence rates of short-period planets around Sun-like stars. Recent work…

<Abridged> The impact of a meteoroid onto an asteroid transfers linear and angular momentum to the larger body, which may affect its orbit and its rotational state. Here we show that the meteoroid environment of our Solar System can have an…

Our knowledge of the properties of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) in the inner heliosphere is constrained by the relative lack of plasma observations between Sun and 1 AU. In this work, we present a comprehensive catalog of 47 CMEs measured…

Giant impacts were common in the early evolution of the Solar System, and it is possible that Venus also experienced an impact. A giant impact on Venus could have affected its rotation rate and possibly its thermal evolution. In this work,…

The last phase of the formation of rocky planets is dominated by collisions among Moon- to Mars-sized planetary embryos. Simulations of this phase need to handle the difficulty of including the post-impact material without saturating the…

Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, possesses a weak intrinsic magnetic field and has only a very tenuous atmosphere (exosphere). These three conditions result in a direct coupling between the plasma emitted from the Sun (namely the…

We perform a suite of smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations to investigate in detail the results of a giant impact on the young Uranus. We study the internal structure, rotation rate, and atmospheric retention of the post-impact…

With laboratory experiments we investigate the ejecta of low-velocity (~m/s) impacts into multi-scale granular media and compare them against ejecta from impacts into mono-scale media. Impacts are into a 50 cm diameter galvanized washtub…

The fate of surface water on Venus is one of the most important outstanding problems in comparative planetology. Here a new concept is proposed to explain water removal on a steam-covered proto Venus, referred to as impact-driven planetary…

Mesosiderites are a type of stony-iron meteorites composed of a mixture of silicates and Fe-Ni metals. The mesosiderite silicates and metals are considered to have originated from the crust and metal core, respectively, of a differentiated…

Titan is the only icy satellite in the solar system with a dense atmosphere. This atmosphere is composed primarily of nitrogen with a few percent methane, which supports an active, methane-based hydrological cycle on Titan. The presence of…