Collisional fragmentation of porous objects in planetary systems
- Author(s)
- O. Wandel, Christoph Schäfer, Thomas Maindl
- Abstract
We investigate the formation of the crater Stickney on the Mars moon Phobos. With 9 km in width, Stickney is the largest crater on Phobos. Our goal is to tighten the parameter space regarding the possible scenarios to form Stickney. Therefore, we performed Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations with varying impact velocity, impact angle, radius of the impactor as well as the degree of porosity. Our simulations show that the impactor radius r_p was smaller than 500 m. They further indicate, that the impactor was very likely around 300 m to 400 m with an impact velocity v_p between 6.5 km/s and 8.5 km/s. In addition, our results point to a porosity of around 25%. Regarding the topology of Stickney and our simulations, the impact angle was most likely rather steep.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Astrophysics
- External organisation(s)
- Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
- Pages
- 225 - 242
- No. of pages
- 18
- Publication date
- 03-2017
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 103003 Astronomy, 103004 Astrophysics
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/e5651e54-250e-428c-a44b-72b88c979fb2