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Space Forum / Astronomy / June 2006finding impact deposits on the moon?
There must be places on the lunar surface where asteroids have impacted "gently" enough to leave behind a noticeable deposit of non-lunar material. I'm thinking particularly of the sort of asteroids that produce iron meteorites on Earth. Have any such impact deposits be found? Would it be possible to locate them using existing data sets? Thank you, Joe Strout Joe Strout <joe@strout.net> wrote in news:joe-C637D0.13351620062006 @comcast.dca.giganews.com: > There must be places on the lunar surface where asteroids have impacted > "gently" enough to leave behind a noticeable deposit of non-lunar [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > Have any such impact deposits be found? Would it be possible to locate > them using existing data sets? Remember that the moon has no atmosphere so even tiny dust grains will hit at full speed dictated by orbital mechanics. Some info here about what was actually brought back: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/expmoon/Apollo_Samples.html Klazmon. > Thank you, > Joe Strout > There must be places on the lunar surface where asteroids have impacted > "gently" enough to leave behind a noticeable deposit of non-lunar [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > Thank you, > Joe Strout I think it is pie in the sky at the present time. But if I had to make a suggestion, I'd say try the Aristarchus plateau. That would be the most obviously place I would start my search. http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Aristarchus%20plateau&btnG=Google+Search &sa=N&tab=wi George >>There must be places on the lunar surface where asteroids have impacted >>"gently" enough to leave behind a noticeable deposit of non-lunar [quoted text clipped - 14 lines] > > George Any asteroid coming in, will be dropping from a very large distance,and in doing so, will get added almost the moon escape velocity. So there will not be any gentle touchdowns, unless you use a braking rocket engine. >>>There must be places on the lunar surface where asteroids have impacted >>>"gently" enough to leave behind a noticeable deposit of non-lunar [quoted text clipped - 20 lines] > So there will not be any gentle touchdowns, > unless you use a braking rocket engine. Umm, ok. And this is relevant to the discussion, how? George >>>>There must be places on the lunar surface where asteroids have impacted >>>>"gently" enough to leave behind a noticeable deposit of non-lunar [quoted text clipped - 25 lines] > > George See first part about a gentle impact, anything faster then 2km/sec will never be gentle. >>>>>There must be places on the lunar surface where asteroids have >>>>>impacted [quoted text clipped - 30 lines] > See first part about a gentle impact, > anything faster then 2km/sec will never be gentle. Why would a 1 km/s impact be considered gentle? George > > I think it is pie in the sky at the present time. But if I had to make a > > suggestion, I'd say try the Aristarchus plateau. That would be the most [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > So there will not be any gentle touchdowns, > unless you use a braking rocket engine. Fine, "gentle touchdown" was an unfortunate bit of hyperbole; let's get over it. For the same reason as the above (i.e. lack of appreciable atmosphere), any ejecta from an impact follows simple parabolic arcs. Much of it will end up falling right back into the crater -- including the material from the impactor, even if it were completely vaporized. Atoms don't just disappear. So, back to the question: does anyone have any suggestion as to HOW one would find resource-rich impact sites? For example, check out the crater at about 27.5 N, 47.0 E, shown as bright blue in this Clementine image: <http://tinyurl.com/hmbuy> This is the Clementine Ratio set, where blue represents the ratio of 414 nm to 750 nm wavelengths; blue areas, if I understand the description properly, are those iron-rich areas with higher titanium. Does this represent material deposited from an iron- and titanium-rich asteroid? Or is it merely the underlying basaltic material exposed by the impact? Also, the Clementine data is of rather low resolution -- I'd love to see the same area in the Lunar Prospector data, but I haven't found anyplace that makes this data easily available at high resolution, like pdsmaps.wr.usgs.gov does for the Clementine data. Any tips on mining the LP data? Thanks, - Joe |
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