Meteoroid Fragmentation in the Martian Atmosphere and the Formation of Crater Clusters.

ABSTRACT: The current rate of small impacts on Mars is informed by more than one thousand impact sites formed in the last 20 years, detected in images of the martian surface. More than half of these impacts produced a cluster of small craters formed by fragmentation of the meteoroid in the martian atmosphere. The spatial distributions, number and sizes of craters in these clusters provide valuable constraints on the properties of the impacting meteoroid population as well as the meteoroid fragmentation process. In this paper, we use a recently compiled database of crater cluster observations to calibrate a model of meteoroid fragmentation in Mars' atmosphere and constrain key model parameters, including the lift coefficient and fragment separation velocity, as well as meteoroid property distribution

SUBMITTER: Collins GS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9541127 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature