Hypovelocity Impacts in the Asteroid Belt

Computer Science – Sound

Scientific paper

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Asteroids, Impacts, Surface Processes

Scientific paper

The mean impact speed in the asteroid belt is roughly 5 km/s. Coincidentally, that is also roughly the speed of sound in iron-nickel meteorites and in basalt. The speed of sound in ordinary chondrites is about 3.5 km/s. Because of this, other things being equal, a higher percentage of impacts into chondritic parent bodies will generate shock waves than impacts into metallic or basaltic bodies. Without a shock wave, much less material may be vaporized and lost to space. Similarly, impacts involving metallic or basaltic impactors may be less likely to disrupt and vaporize the impactor, perhaps resulting in preferential retention of these materials over chondritic material on the asteroidal surface. To investigate the frequency of "hypovelocity" (slower than the speed of sound in a material) impacts with members of the C, S and M classes, we have calculated probability distributions of impact velocities between the 682 asteroids with D > 50 km (a representative sample of asteroids in the main belt) and 21 asteroids of various classes using the technique of Bottke et al. (1994). We find that peak impact speeds can vary by 2-3 km/s from asteroid to asteroid, and because these speeds are close to the speed of sound in iron-nickel, basalt and ordinary chondrite, these relatively small changes can give rise to large differences in percentage of hypovelocity impacts from asteroid to asteroid. We also find that for a given target, C, S and M-class impactors all have very similar impact speed distributions. Because of these factors, it seems clear that discussions of impact-generated "space weathering" should take not just asteroid size into account, but also compositions and orbits.

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