High Odds of Oncoming Asteroid Impacting Mars—Part II
“If the asteroid hits Mars, we’ll get a great look at the crater within a few days of impact,” said HiRISE principal investigator Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tucson.
The Martian crater that may result from the new Asteroid 2007 WD5 will be the approximately half-a-mile in diameter, or the size of home base to the rover Opporunity’s home base—Victoria. But regardless what will result, NASA’s MRO probe and its High-Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera will be in location to view the Martian collision. Considered to be the most powerful camera developed to study the red planet, the HiRISE is just one of six instruments on the MRO probe.
Primary impacts on the surface of Mars are caused by high-velocity collisions from asteroids and comets. Secondary craters are formed when a large number of high velocity rocks are ejected from the primary collision. The study of these craters are important because the offer the study of cratering medhanics, the sudy of terrain or process ages, the properties of target material [presence of ground ice], and to better understand landscape evolution. The study of the smaller craters offer information about atmospheric density, and its variation over time.
Since not all craters derive from comets or asteroids, but instead from volcanism or ground collapse, the Asteroid 2007 WD5 is even more important as the study will begin approximately upon impact. Finely preserved deposits are usually collected from the crater depressions themselves, belonging to the “sedimentation and layering processes” theme. If these studies go on and represent past lakes or channels then it will belong to the “fluvial processes” theme. Meanwhile inter-crater dunes will fall into the “Aeolian processes.” This list goes on and on to further define the main themes of crater depression study.
The HiRISE refers to high resolution images, meaning that images on Mars as small as three feet across will be seen crystal clear, mostly in black and white with about 20% in color. Another good thing about the HiRISE is that two images are taken at slightly different angles, in about 1000 stereo pairs. This will allow NASA to form 3-D images of Mar to show the surface type for landing future missions. The good thing about the HiRISE is they will be returned to Earth in about 15 minutes depending on the variables. Deep Space Network allows data to travel at the speed of light through a specific set of antennas, which means a lot depends on the distance of the MRO, or Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
This entry was posted on Saturday, January 5th, 2008 at 12:49 pm and is filed under Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
