Early stages of crater birth captured on camera - space - 30 June 2010 - New Scientist
17:19 30 June 2010 by
Brendan Hermalyn and Peter Schultz of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, used a gun at NASA's Ames Vertical Gun Range to fire projectiles into sand at speeds of up to 5.6 kilometres per second.
Most of the material thrown up by the impact took to the air during the impact's "main stage", landing within a few crater radii of where the projectile hit. But the high-speed video also revealed particles kicked up in a relatively unstudied early stage.
During this phase of crater formation material is flung fastest and farthest, for example creating the long rays of the moon's Tycho crater and, potentially, launching a number of meteoroids into space from the surface of the moon and Mars.
The speeds of impacts in the experiment are much lower than the average for bodies like the moon and so can't reproduce effects such as melting and vaporisation that more energetic impacts cause, says Melosh. But he says the experiment could be an important check for computer models of impacts.
Hard landing (Image: B. Hermalyn/P. Schultz/Brown University)
Early stages of crater birth captured on camera - space - 30 June 2010 - New Scientist
17:19 30 June 2010 by
Brendan Hermalyn and Peter Schultz of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, used a gun at NASA's Ames Vertical Gun Range to fire projectiles into sand at speeds of up to 5.6 kilometres per second.
Most of the material thrown up by the impact took to the air during the impact's "main stage", landing within a few crater radii of where the projectile hit. But the high-speed video also revealed particles kicked up in a relatively unstudied early stage.
During this ph
ase of crater formation material is flung fastest and farthest, for example creating the long rays of the moon's Tycho crater and, potentially, launching a number of meteoroids into space from the surface of the moon and Mars.
The speeds of impacts in the experiment are much lower than the average for bodies like the moon and so can't reproduce effects such as melting and vaporisation that more energetic impacts cause, says Melosh. But he says the experiment could be an important check for computer models of impacts.
Hard landing (Image: B. Hermalyn/P. Schultz/Brown University)