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Tag Archives: impacts
When Gale was young
With Mars rover Curiosity safely down on Mars, scientists are set to explore the geology and history of Gale Crater, searching for evidence of habitable environments, ancient or modern. Gale Crater has attracted much study since it became a candidate … Continue reading
Posted in Reports
Tagged Curiosity, Gale Crater, hydrothermal systems, impacts, Mars Science Laboratory, water
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Mars Rover Opportunity explores Cape York
Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity reached the south end of Cape York, a segment of the rim of Endeavour Crater about 700 meters (2,300 feet) long, on August 9, 2011. Scientists and engineers examined several targets there before driving the rover … Continue reading
Posted in Reports
Tagged breccia, Cape York, Greeley Haven, gypsum, Homestake, impact melt, impacts, Kidd Creek, Mars Exploration Rovers, Meridiani Planum, Opportunity, Tisdale, water
1 Comment
Did big impacts disrupt heat flow in the Martian mantle?
Mars shows more than 20 impact basins with diameters of at least 1,000 kilometers (600 miles), and five of these are 2,500 km wide or larger. Based on crater counts, most of the basins appear to have occurred between in … Continue reading
Airblast avalanches
The aerial blast wave from a meteorite impact can trigger dust avalanches in the vicinity, says a new paper published in Icarus. A group of scientists led by Kaylan Burleigh (University of Arizona) reached this conclusion after studying a cluster … Continue reading
Posted in Reports
Tagged airblast, craters, dust, dust avalanches, HiRISE, impacts, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Medusae Fossae Formation, meteorites, slope streaks
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How often does Mars get whacked?
Or — to pose this question more usefully — what’s the rate of crater-making impacts on Mars as compared to, say, the Moon? Why the Moon? Because it’s the one extraterrestrial body for which scientists have both a long visible … Continue reading
Posted in Reports
Tagged asteroid belt, asteroids, cratering rate, craters, dating, impacts, meteorites, Moon, Moon-Mars cratering scaling factor
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Peeking into a stacked deck
No one is planning to send a Mars rover into the high latitudes (north or south) anytime soon, but if a paper in Icarus (June 2011) by Seth J. Kadish and James W. Head (both Brown University) is correct, scientists … Continue reading
Posted in Reports
Tagged climate change, craters, dust, ice, impacts, pedestal craters, polar layered deposits
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Big bangs
Really large meteorites produce impact scars big enough to be called basins. Although not defined by a particular size, basins differ from smaller craters in that the floor of a basin follows the planet’s curvature. New calculations published in the … Continue reading
Chips off the old block?
Are Martian moons Phobos and Deimos escaped asteroids, as sometimes proposed? Robert Craddock (National Air and Space Museum) suggests in a paper in the February 2011 issue of Icarus they may have come from a large impact on Mars instead. … Continue reading