Meteor airburst above Mars, A Mars Odyssey THEMIS release Options

[ugordan]

This has got to be one of the coolest Mars images yet: http://themis.asu.edu/zoom-20080813a

A meteor burning up above the ground leaving no crater, only a record of a powerful shockwave hitting the ground!

You can see how the ground zero area god disturbed very little as the shock was coming almost straight down and the darkened outer portion is where dust was blown away as the radial portion of the shock picked up in strength. It's where trees would have been leveled if this were Earth

One can infer the direction it came from, from below in the image moving in a 11 o’clock direction judging by lack of dust there (the shock would also principally be moving downward along the flight path). The strongest disturbance is further along the flight path from ground zero where the shock would be reinforced by the kinetic energy of the body (see recent Tunguska simulations on this effect).

Awesome stuff, even if coming from someone who likes big things going BOOM.

[nprev]

Boy howdy, and I'm not kidding, future Mars colonists will be troglodytes by necessity, which is extremely ironic.

IIRC, every place on Mars gets whacked with something comparable around every 20 years or so based on MGS data. I don't want one of those damn things to hit me, doubt that anyone else does!

[dvandorn]

IIRC, every place on Mars gets whacked with something comparable around every 20 years or so based on MGS data.

You know, I've heard that a lot lately. And yet... there do not appear to be any gross changes at either Viking site more than 30 years after they landed that could be intepreted as ejecta damage from close impacts. And neither site has obviously suffered an actual recent impact, at least from the lander's POV from horizon to horizon.

Granted that the Pathfinder site was only established a little over 10 years ago -- but there's no sign of changes to that site attributable to direct impact or secondary debris impact, either.

Doesn't appear that a habitat at any of those locations would have felt the need to duck and cover over the past few decades, anyway.

The longer this discussion goes on, the more desperately I desire a seismic network on Mars. That would answer the question once and for all.

-the other Doug