The SLAM Impact Experiment: Overview and Preliminary Thoughts

The SLAM Impact Experiment: Overview and Preliminary Thoughts

Clark R. Chapman Clark R. Chapman Southwest Research Institute Boulder CO

SLAM Organizational Meeting

SwRI Boulder 14 November 2005

Big Issues (for us and for our potential reviewers)

How well do we understand lunar cratering? (scaling, regolith, ejecta, secondary cratering…)

How would the SLAM impact/s compare with other cratering experiments/ simulations? (nuclear explosion craters, Ames gun, Deep Impact…)

How unique and relevant is the experiment? (icy projectile, low-v, multiple impacts…)

Basically, is this (or can we make this) Basically, is this (or can we make this) vitally exciting science?vitally exciting science?Basically, is this (or can we make this) Basically, is this (or can we make this) vitally exciting science?vitally exciting science?

Some Questions to Ponder…(1)

Where should impact/s be targeted? Mare vs highlands Equatorial vs high latitude Dark side, near limb, near pole (visibility issues) Near previously characterized site? Uniformity within error ellipse?

What do we expect to see? Will there be a flash? Can LRO/HST/Earth-based

observers see it? Must it be against dark side? What temperature (hence wavelength) do we expect?

Analogous questions concerning ejecta plume What range of crater sizes do we expect to see? (~10 m) What is maximum LRO resolution? (How well can we

characterize ejecta fragments, secondaries, crater structure, modification of pre-existing features?)

Some Questions to Ponder…(2)

What impact velocities are possible/desirable? What are requirements of volatile transport experiment? Are velocities sub-hypervelocity?

What real phenomena will low-velocity impacts simulate? Will this experiment tell us more about formation of secondary

craters than primary craters? Are velocities too small to generate a visible flash? Will be be unable to penetrate even thin mare regolith?

Is there any way to increase impact velocity?

What impact angle is desirable? 45 deg. Is most “typical”; vertical impact has been

studied most often; very oblique impacts are interesting

What is trade-off between one large impactor and multiple smaller impactors?

Some Questions to Ponder…(3)

What did we learn from the Deep Impact experience that informs the SLAM impact expt.?

How useful is the possibility for varying impactor types (e.g. solid ice, rubble pile, metal)?

What is the potential scope of “SLAM Watch”? Can amateurs see something, or only the biggest

telescopes (I seem to remember that nobody saw the Rangers impact on the Moon, even using large telescopes, though Leonid flashes have been seen)

Earth-orbiting observatories: will we be competing with ourselves?

Potential LRO integration: can we assume it?

Late Heavy Bombardment… or “terminal cataclysm”

Proposed in 1973 by Tera et al. who noted a peak in radiometric ages of lunar samples ~4.0 - 3.8 Ga

Sharply declining basin-formation rate between Imbrium (3.85 Ga) and final basin, Orientale (3.82 Ga)

Few rock ages, no impact melt ages prior to 3.9 Ga (prob. Nectaris age)

Implies: short, 50-100 Myr bombard- ment, but minimal basin formation between crustal formation and LHB

After Wilhelms (1987)

?

LHB(Cu

mu

lati

ve

) C

rate

r D

en

sit

y

Debate over “Cataclysm”

“Stonewall” effect (Hartmann 1975, 2003) destroys and pulverizes rocks prior to saturation

Grinspoon’s (1989) two-dimensional models concur

No impact melts prior to 3.9 Ga (Ryder 1990, 2002)

Lunar crust not pene-trated or pulverized (but constrains only top-heavy size distributions)

No enrichment in meteoritic/projectile material (not robust: projectile material prefer-entially ejected)

A Misconception vs. It Happened!

TimeTime

Flu

xF

lux

“Tail-end” of accretion

Post-crust, pre-spike lull defines LHB

(Mostly) uncontroversial sharp decline in bombardment rate from 3.90 Ga to 3.83 Ga Further confusion on LHB decay:

>Basin formation decayed in 50 Myr >Rocks degassed over 200 Myr >Impact melts decayed over 1000 Myr [Chapman, Cohen & Grinspoon, 2003]

?

Relevance of Impact Melts(Graham Ryder, 1990)

Basin formation produces copious melts (~10% of involved materials)

Smaller craters contribute few melts Melt formation efficiency increases with crater size Basins dominate involved materials because of

shallow size-distribution

Impact melts are produced more efficiently than rock ages are reset

Therefore, age-distribution of impact melts should be robust evidence of basin formation history (given unbiased sampling)

Therefore, age-distribution of impact melts should be robust evidence of basin formation history (given unbiased sampling)

What Happened Before Nectaris (i.e. before 3.90 - 3.92 [4.1?] Ga)?

Fragmentary geology remains from earlier times.

But 50% of Wilhelms’ “definite” basins pre-date Nectaris (and 70% of all “definite”+“probable”+“possible” ones).

Surprisingly, no impact melts pre-date the Nectaris Basin, so none of the earlier basins formed melts… or those melts are somehow “hidden” from being collected! (Even though some pre-Nectarian rocks exist.)

During the long period from crustal solidification until the oldest known basins, there was (or was not) a “lull” in basin formation (and thus a cataclysm).

Weak contraints (listed before): Lunar crust intact Minimal meteoritic contamination

Conundrum Concerning Impact Melts: Do they Reflect Impact Flux?

No impact melts have been found securely older than Nectaris (3.92 Ga) although 2/3rds of known basins occurred stratigraphically before Nectaris (Wilhelms, 1987). Where are their impact melts?

Cohen et al. (2000) found tiny melt clasts from 4.0 Ga extending all the way to 2.4 Ga (only 2 of 7 melt-producing “events” occurred back during the LHB). Thus, many impact melts are found dating from more recent times when we know that basins weren’t forming.

Numerous early basins yield no melts; yet more recent, inefficient melt-production by small craters does yield melts!?

There is only one Conclusion: Collected impact melts are strongly biased to recent events...There is only one Conclusion: Collected impact melts are strongly biased to recent events...

LHB

Lunar, HED Rock Degassing Ages

[Data summarized by Bogard (1995)]

Moon

The LHB, as defined by basin ages, is a narrow range (100 Myr LHB shown by pink box).

Predominant lunar rock ages range from 3.6 to 4.2 Ga. (Impact melts are restricted to <3.92 Ga.)

So rock ages correlate So rock ages correlate poorly with basin ages.poorly with basin ages.

(HED meteorite ages range from 3.2 to 4.3 Ga. So bombardment in the asteroid belt extended ~300 Myr after end of lunar rock degassings.)

HEDParentBody (Vesta?)

4.4 Time 3.3

Asteroidal vs. Lunar LHB

Kring & Cohen (2002) summary of meteorite de-gassing ages

Very “spread out” compared with lunar LHB

Somewhat “spread out” compared with lunar rock impact degassing ages

Evidence is dissimilar! Different impact histories, or Different selection biases

LHB

Lunar rock de-gassing ages

Saturation by 30-100 km craters would have pulverized/destroyed early melt-rocks (Hartmann, 1975, 2003), creating artificial rock-age spike. but “it is patently not the case” that all rocks would have been reset or

“pulverized to fine powder” (Hartmann et al., 2000 [presumably one of his co-authors])

comminution by a couple generations of large-crater saturation is NOT like modern churning of uppermost meters of regolith

Grinspoon’s (1989) mathematical model seemed to verify the stonewall effect. but it is a 2-D model; he converts 100% of crater floor to melt while the

real percent (volumetrically) is much less

However, if melt preferentially veneers surface, as much of it does, and older veneers are covered up, then the 2-D model may approximate the 3-D reality.

A New Look at the “Stonewall”

Size Distributions: Values of Differential Power-Law Index b

Crater Production Function: Areal and Volumetric Implications

Crater size distribution is not a simple power-law

Areal saturation is dominated by craters 100 meters to 2 km diameter (surficial regolith) craters 30 km to 100 km diameter (which penetrate down kilometers)

Volumetric processing is dominated by largest craters/basins

“Steep” size distribution for <1 km craters churns/comminutes upper few meters of lunar soil (particle sizes <100 microns)

.: ::.

.: ::.

:

..:

.: ::.

.

:

::

.

.

:

::

.

Standard Function from Neukum & Ivanov (1994)

b= -4: equal mass

b= -3: equal area, saturation equilibrium

We Need to Model the 3-D Emplacement/Collection of Melts

Model needs: (building on work by L. Haskin and students) %-tage melt production as function of diameter 3-D mapping of emplacement of melts and other ejecta time-history of megaregolith excavation, deposition, and

“churning”, varying the impactor size-distribution gardening/impact destruction near surface over last ~3.5 Gyr analysis of collection/selection criteria and biases

Some qualitative sampling biases are clear: if each new basin distributes its melts uniformly throughout the

volume of the megaregolith, and churns earlier melts uniformly, then impact melts collected at the surface should sample the basin formation history in an unbiased fashion.

If each new basin distributes melts in a surface veneer, and older melts are covered by ejecta blankets, then surface sampling will be dominated by most recent basin.

Conclusions about Lunar Evidence for LHB

If lunar basin formation sharply declined from 3.85 Ga (Imbrium) to ~3.82 Ga (Orientale, the very last one), then dynamics of LHB source bodies are strongly constrained.

Until the processes that cause sampling bias for impact melts are understood (3-D models), absence of melts from ancient times provides a minimal constraint on the pre-Nectaris bombardment rate.

Hence, whether LHB was a “cataclysm” or just an inflection in a declining flux remains unknown.

Mismatch in lunar/asteroidal age histograms means (a) different LHBs or (b) different sampling biases. We can’t conclude anything about (a) until (b) is understood.

But how robust is

THIS chronology???

Non-Lunar Evidence for LHB

Cratered uplands on Mars/Mercury (and even Galilean satellites!) inferred to be due to same LHB… but absolute chronology is poorly known or unknown.

ALH84001 has a ~4 Ga resetting age… but that is “statistics of one”.

Peaks in resetting ages noted for some types of meteorites (HEDs, ordinary chondrites)… but age distributions differ from lunar case.

Remnant Planetesimals: Comets, Asteroids, Trojans, etc.

SunSun

We are here!We are here!

Jupiter’s orbit

Jupiter’s orbit

TrojansTrojans

NEOsNEOs

Comet

s & O

SS

plane

tesim

als

Comet

s & O

SS

plane

tesim

als

Asteroid belt

Accretion of planets from planetesimals necessarily results in diverse groups of circumstellar and circumplanetary small bodies, subject to temporary confinement among dynamical resonances

Accretion of planets from planetesimals necessarily results in diverse groups of circumstellar and circumplanetary small bodies, subject to temporary confinement among dynamical resonances

Proposed Dynamical Origins for LHB

Outer solar system planetesimals from late-forming Uranus/Neptune (Wetherill 1975)

Break-up of large asteroid (but a big enough asteroid is difficult to destroy)

Extended tail-end of accretion; remnants from terrestrial planets region (Morbidelli 2001)

Expulsion of a 5th terrestrial planet (Chambers & Lissauer 2002; Levison 2002)

OSS planetesimals and asteroids perturbed by sudden expulsion of Uranus & Neptune from between Jupiter & Saturn (Levison et al. 2001)

Late-stage post Moon-formation Earth/Moon-specific LHB (Ryder 1990) More generally: any dynamical readjustment of the planets in a planetary system that “shakes up” (e.g. by changing positions of resonances) remnant small-body populations…could occur late, even very late.

More generally: any dynamical readjustment of the planets in a planetary system that “shakes up” (e.g. by changing positions of resonances) remnant small-body populations…could occur late, even very late.

Size Distributions

*Accretional *Collisional *Tidal disruption

Qualitative Features of LHBs (divide by 3 if Nectaris is 4.1 Ga)

On Earth, 1 “Chicxulub” (K-T boundary event, 100 million MT) every 10,000 years. Each kills virtually every complex lifeform,

most fossilizable species go extinct, radiation of many new species

One basin-forming event (10 billion MT!) every 500,000 years. Each erodes atmosphere, transforms

ecosphere, boils oceans

Total LHB: ~100 basins, 1000s of K-T events. The 100 Myr bom-bardment The 100 Myr bom-bardment would devastate life.would devastate life.

What does it take to sterilize planet Earth???

K-T

Why Giant Impacts are Especially Lethal

Environmental changes are nearly instantaneous! (Most lethal, global effects occur in a couple of hours to a month or so.) Very short compared with the lifetime of an

individual; most competing mass-extinction theories invoke changes over 1000s to millions of years.

Independent, compound global effects (firestorm, ozone layer destroyed, tsunami, earthquake, oceans poisoned, “impact winter” followed by global warming, etc.)

atmosphere

surface/ocean

crust

mantle

Impacts dominate or destroy the atmos-phere, dramatically affect the surface and oceans, but their effects may not fully involve the crust and rarely the upper mantle.

Impacts dominate or destroy the atmos-phere, dramatically affect the surface and oceans, but their effects may not fully involve the crust and rarely the upper mantle.

LHB Issues for Solar System Astrobiology

Lunar evidence on an LHB is less well understood than commonly believed. It must be re-evaluated: it is our baseline! How widespread in the solar system was this

lunar LHB? Which small-body reservoirs/dynamical

readjustments were responsible?

Were other reservoirs/causes responsible for earlier bombardments, or for the cratered terrains and basins on other planets/satellites/asteroids?

The future: the Earth is likely to suffer another basin-forming impact (not soon!); what else could be in our future?

How was early evolving life on Mars or Europa affected? How will Earth’s complex life be affected in the future?

How was early evolving life on Mars or Europa affected? How will Earth’s complex life be affected in the future?

LHB Issues for Extra-Solar System Astrobiology

It is plausible that similar, or even much more extreme, LHBs (or VLHBs) would affect planets in other systems. What planetary system configurations are most likely to result in small-body

reservoirs and unstable dynamics that would cause LHBs? Are LHB/VLHB reservoirs astronomically observable (directly or indirectly)?

What range of bombardment traits foster life (exchanging materials, spurring evolutionary change)?

How frequent would giant impacts have to be to perpetually frustrate the origin or evolutionary progression of life?

How big an LHB surely sterilizes a planet? What about “attic” storage and reseeding?

How do LHBs compete with other cosmic dangers to life in different stellar/galactic environments?

Conclusions

Are Late Heavy Bombardments plausible during the early histories of planets? YES!YES!

Could LHBs profoundly change planetary environments and the origin and evolution of life? YES!YES!

Was there a “cataclysm” in the Earth/Moon system around 3.9 Ga? The bombardment rate was high, but was it a spike? We still DON’T KNOW!DON’T KNOW!