(meteorobs) Re: Meteor picture from Mars?

Marco Langbroek marco.langbroek at wanadoo.nl
Sat Jun 11 19:50:31 EDT 2005



Pavol Habuda wrote:
> 1. Entry velocities on Mars are in range from 5 up to 55 km/s.
> Lower end is caused escape velocity from planet, upper velocity
> of body on parabolic orbit strikes Mars directly head on 
> (body is coming from apex).

Interestingly, the lower end of this range (5 km/s) is close to the value for 
the onset of dark flight with meteorites, and clearly below the point (velocity 
<10-12 km/s) where luminosity, if any at all, is mainly due to deceleration and 
not so much to ablation. This would suggest that the slowest Martian meteorites 
ablate very little or perhaps nothing at all of their initial mass. So you could 
in theory have fresh fallen meteorites at Mars that show no or almost no fusion 
crust.

- Marco


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Dr Marco Langbroek
Dutch Meteor Society (DMS)

e-mail: meteorites at dmsweb.org
private website http://home.wanadoo.nl/marco.langbroek
DMS website http://www.dmsweb.org
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