Related papers: Mercurian impact ejecta: Meterorites and mantle
In their model for the origin of the parent bodies of iron meteorites, Bottke et al proposed differentiated planetesimals that were formed in the region of 1-2 AU during the first 1.5 Myr, as the parent bodies, and suggested that these…
We examine the ability of impacts by Kuiper Belt debris to cause regolith exchange between objects in the Pluto system. We find that ejecta velocities from KB impacts are too low to escape from Pluto and Charon. However, ejecta can escape…
Strong strengthening of material under high confining pressure and jet nature of outflow from impact craters permit to show meteoroid impacts of >=10E6 Mt TNT equivalent are capable of ejecting rocks up to ~1 km in size from the Earth into…
The Deep Impact encounter with the nucleus of 9P/Tempel ejected small grains (a <~ 10 micron) into the comet's coma, evidenced by thermal emission from small dust grains at mid-infrared wavelengths (~10 micron) and dynamical simulations of…
Collisions between large, similar-sized bodies are believed to shape the final characteristics and composition of terrestrial planets. Their inventories of volatiles such as water, are either delivered or at least significantly modified by…
High resolution images of Mercury's surface, from the MESSENGER spacecraft, reveal many bright deposits associated with irregular, shallow, rimless depressions whose origins were attributed to volatile-related activity, but absent…
Impactors of different types and sizes can produce a final crater of the same diameter on a planet under certain conditions. We derive the condition for such "isocrater impacts" from scaling laws, as well as relations that describe how the…
During planet formation, numerous small impacting bodies result in cratering impacts on large target bodies. A fraction of the target surface is eroded, while a fraction of the impactor material accretes onto the surface. These fractions…
Planets and stars are expected to be compositionally linked because they accrete from the same material reservoir. However, astronomical observations revealed the existence of exoplanets whose bulk density is far higher than what is…
A model is presented of a ballistic, collisionless, steady state population of ejecta launched at randomly distributed times and velocities and moving under constant gravity above the surface of an airless planetary body. Within a…
Space debris larger than 1 cm can damage space instruments and impact Earth. The low-Earth orbits (at heights smaller than 2000 km) and orbits near the geostationary- Earth orbit (at 35786 km height) are especially endangered, because most…
[abridged] In the typical giant-impact scenario for the Moon formation most of the Moon's material originates from the impactor. Any Earth-impactor composition difference should, therefore, correspond to a comparable Earth-Moon composition…
The dusty regolith covering the surfaces of asteroids and planetary satellites differs in size, shape, and composition from terrestrial soil particles and is subject to very different environmental conditions. Experimental studies of the…
Multiple studies have shown that planet-planet scattering plays an important role in the dynamical evolution of planetary systems. For instance, it has been shown that planet-planet scattering can reproduce the eccentricity distribution of…
The chemical composition of a planetary body reflects its starting conditions modified by numerous processes during its formation and geological evolution. Measurements by X-ray, gamma-ray, and neutron spectrometers on the MESSENGER…
Late accretion onto the Hadean Earth included large impacts that could have influenced early habitability, either by sterilizing the planet or alternatively catalyzing the origin of life by delivering iron required to create a reducing…
We performed impact experiments to observe patterns in an ejecta curtain with targets consisting of small sand particles and large inclusions comparable to or smaller than the size of the projectiles. The spatial intensity distributions in…
A high-angular momentum giant impact with the Earth can produce a Moon with a silicate isotopic composition nearly identical to that of Earth's mantle, consistent with observations of terrestrial and lunar rocks. However, such an event…
Once the terrestrial planets had mostly completed their assembly, bombardment continued by planetesimals left-over from accretion. Highly siderophile element (HSE) abundances in Mars' mantle imply its late accretion supplement was 0.8 wt.%;…
We investigate the influence of impacts of large planetesimals and small planetary embryos on the early Martian surface on the hydrodynamic escape of an early steam atmosphere that is exposed to the high soft X-ray and EUV flux of the young…