Impacts into porous asteroids

Abstract Many small bodies in the solar system have bulk density well below the solid density of the constituent mineral grains in their meteorite counterparts. Those low-density bodies undoubtedly have significant porosity, which is a key factor that affects the formation of impact craters. This paper summarizes the results of lab experiments in which materials with porosity ranging from 43% to 96% were impacted at ∼1800 m/s. The experiments were performed on a geotechnical centrifuge, in order to reproduce the lithostatic overburden stress and ejecta ballistics that occur in large-scale cratering events on asteroids or planetary satellites. Experiments performed at various accelerations, up to 514G, simulate the outcomes of impacts at size scales up to several tens of km in diameter. Our experiments show that an impact into a highly porous cohesionless material generates a large ovoid-shaped cavity, due to crushing by the outgoing shock. The cavity opens up to form a transient crater that grows until the material flow is arrested by gravity. The cavity then collapses to form the final crater. During collapse, finely crushed material that lines the cavity wall is carried down and collected in a localized region below the final crater floor. At large simulated sizes (high accelerations), most of the crater volume is formed by compaction, because growth of the transient crater is quickly arrested. Nearly all ejected material falls back into the crater, leaving the crater without an ejecta blanket. We find that such compaction cratering and suppression of the ejecta blankets occur for large craters on porous bodies when the ratio of the lithostatic stress at one crater depth to the crush strength of the target exceeds ∼0.005. The results are used to identify small solar system bodies on which compaction cratering likely occurs. A model is developed that gives the crater size and ejecta mass that would result for a specified impact into a porous object.