Boulders Ejected From Small Impact Craters

Details Boulders Ejected From Small Impact Craters Boulders Ejected From Small Impact Craters

Sep 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006dps....38.4902b&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #38, #49.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.575

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

We investigate the distribution of boulders ejected from lunar craters by analyzing high resolution Lunar Orbiter images. Our previous study (DPS 2004) of four small craters indicated that larger boulders are more frequently found close to the crater rim rather than far away, and that the size of the ejecta drops off as a power law with distance from the crater. Our current study adds more than ten new bouldery craters that range in size from 200 m to several kilometers and are found on a variety of terrain (mare, highlands, and the Copernicus ejecta blanket.) For each crater we plot the boulder diameter as a function of the ejection velocity of the boulder. We compare this size-velocity distribution with the size-velocity distribution of ejecta from large craters (Vickery 1986, 1987) to ascertain the mechanism of fracture of the substrate in the impact. We also make cumulative plots of the boulders, indicating the number of boulders of each size present around the crater. The cumulative plots allow us to compare our boulder distributions with the distributions of secondary craters from large impacts. Material thrown from a several-hundred-meter diameter crater may land intact as boulders, but material thrown from a tens-of-kilometers diameter crater will travel at a significantly higher velocity, and will form a secondary crater when it impacts the surface. Our data helps elucidate whether the upturn, at small diameters, of the cratering curve of the terrestrial planets is due to secondary impacts or to the primary population. This work is funded by NASA PGG grant NNG05GK40G.

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