Formation of the Giant Impact Crater on Asteroid Vesta

Details Formation of the Giant Impact Crater on Asteroid Vesta Formation of the Giant Impact Crater on Asteroid Vesta

Oct 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010dps....42.3908j&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #42, #39.08; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.1033

Mathematics

Logic

Scientific paper

Vesta is the second or third most massive asteroid, and the most terrestrial. A year from now Vesta will be orbited by NASA's Dawn mission. Here we numerically model the impact event that blasted off its southern hemisphere to help establish the geologic setting.
We use a smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) code to model the impact event. Recently this impact code was extended to include a model adapted for porous materials. We use a newly implemented model of dense granular flow to simulate the granular post-impact regolith. Central gravity is used to model gravity as an external force; this speeds up the calculation dramatically compared to a self-gravity approach, allowing for millions of particles, and is appropriate for this class of impact, where the target remains mostly intact throughout the collision.
We assume a completely differentiated target of D = 540 km diameter with a ductile iron core of Dc = 240 km. We perform impact simulations with no initial rotation and also with rotating targets (rotation period P = 5.3 h). The crater dimension and central peak structure produced in our simulations are in a good overall agreement with the Hubble-based topography modeling. Our simulations using a rotating target indicate that an impact of this magnitude, on a planet that spins this rapidly (every 5 hr), exposes many strata, and leaves variably-shaped and abruptly-terminated ejecta depositional sequences that may be mistaken for other geologic forms.

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