SUBSCRIBE
Contact
Strike Zone
February 4th, 2009 | Tags: false color, Mars, Mars Recon. Orbiter | Published in latest, pictures | 4 Comments
Sometime between May 2003 and September 2007 an object hit the Martian atmosphere and broke up into small fragments that slammed into this plain, digging craters and blasting away dust from the surface. Scientists think that colliding pressure waves from two impacts of nearly identical size drew the straight line in the dust. This image shows an area a few hundred meters across. Meteors similar to the one that shattered here routinely cross the Earth’s path as well, but usually explode or burn away in our thicker atmosphere before they reach the surface.
Sent by: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter | From: Mars | Released: January, 2009 | Credit: NASA/JPL/UA | Image source
Responses
Leave a Response
Flickr Group
February 5th, 2009at 3:13 pm(#)
It would be so cool to be able to follow one of these things going in. We came ever-so-close to that last year with 2007 WD5…
February 5th, 2009at 3:54 pm(#)
Can you imagine a shot of the descent like the Phoenix parachute image? That would be something to see.
February 6th, 2009at 11:55 am(#)
At 1/100 of Earth’s atmospheric pressure would there even be enough friction to cause the meteor to incandesce ? Maybe we could ask whoever is throwing those impactors at Mars to attach a parachute to slow them down so the MRO can get a good picture.
BTW - I seem to remember that one of the first objects photographed by one of the rovers was thought to be a meteorite. Awesome!
February 6th, 2009at 12:24 pm(#)
Yes, get them going fast enough and they burn - remember that the probes come in with heat shields.
Here’s another, more recent meteor: http://www.ridingwithrobots.org/blog/?p=1021