Skip to main content

The SMART-1 lunar impact

Burchell, Mark J., Robin-Williams, R., Foing, B.H. (2010) The SMART-1 lunar impact. Icarus, 207 (1). pp. 28-38. ISSN 0019-1035. (doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2009.10.005) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:37222)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2009.10.005

Abstract

The SMART-1 spacecraft impacted the Moon on 3rd September 2006 at a speed of 2 km s?1 and at a very shallow angle of incidence (?1°). The resulting impact crater is too small to be viewed from the Earth; accordingly, the general crater size and shape have been determined here by laboratory impact experiments at the same speed and angle of incidence combined with extrapolating to the correct size scale to match the SMART-1 impact. This predicts a highly asymmetric crater approximately 5.5–26 m long, 1.9–9 m wide, 0.23–1.5 m deep and 0.71–6.9 m3 volume. Some of the excavated mass will have gone into crater rim walls, but 0.64–6.3 m3 would have been ejecta on ballistic trajectories corresponding to a cloud of 2200–21,800 kg of lunar material moving away from the impact site. The shallow Messier crater on the Moon is similarly asymmetric and is usually taken as arising from a highly oblique impact. The light flash from the impact and the associated ejecta plume were observed from Earth, but the flash magnitude was not obtained, so it is not possible to obtain the luminous efficiency of the impact event.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1016/j.icarus.2009.10.005
Uncontrolled keywords: Impact processes; Moon, Surface; Cratering
Subjects: Q Science > QB Astronomy
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Natural Sciences > Physics and Astronomy
Depositing User: Mark Burchell
Date Deposited: 05 Dec 2013 13:04 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:13 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/37222 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

  • Depositors only (login required):

Total unique views for this document in KAR since July 2020. For more details click on the image.