Compaction as the origin of the unusual craters on the asteroid Mathilde

Kevin R. Housen (), Keith A. Holsapple and Michael E. Voss
Additional contact information
Kevin R. Housen: Shock Physics Group, MS 8H-05, The Boeing Company, PO Box 3999
Keith A. Holsapple: 352400, University of Washington
Michael E. Voss: Shock Physics Group, MS 8H-05, The Boeing Company, PO Box 3999

Nature, 1999, vol. 402, issue 6758, 155-157

Abstract: Abstract The asteroid Mathilde has suffered at least five giant impacts. Previous studies suggest that Mathilde's giant craters should be surrounded by blankets of ejecta that are kilometres deep1,2, yet the craters show no evidence of filling by material excavated during later nearby impacts1,3. Computer simulations of impacts have been used to suggest that the absence of ejecta arises because the impact energy is deposited in a small volume, due to Mathilde's unusually high porosity4, which produces ejecta velocities so high that nearly all of the material escapes Mathilde's gravitational field5. Here we report laboratory measurements of high-velocity impacts into porous material, which support an alternative explanation3: the crater is formed mainly by compaction, not excavation. The small amount of ejecta lofted in our experiments have velocities sufficiently low that nearly all of the material is redeposited within the crater bowl. The crater itself results from material being compressed, rather than ejected. This type of cratering implies that highly porous asteroids are minor contributors of meteorites, because essentially no material escapes the asteroids.

Date: 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/45985 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:402:y:1999:i:6758:d:10.1038_45985

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/45985

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().