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NASA's Discarded Spacecraft Debris Creates Craters on Mars, Revealing Surface Weakness
NASA's Mars 2020 mission, which delivered the Perseverance rover to the Martian surface, inadvertently created five craters when it jettisoned two tungsten cruise ballast mass devices (CBMDs) and fragments from the cruise stage. These CBMDs, weighing 77 kilograms each, and the 540-kilogram cruise stage fragments impacted Mars at a velocity of 4.7 kilometers per second, creating craters approximately 70 kilometers northwest of Jezero crater. The craters were identified using images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which captured the new impact sites that were absent in pre-2020 imagery. Researchers analyzed the craters using models to determine the surface properties of Mars, finding that the material is far weaker than predicted by standard crater-scaling laws. The cohesion strength was measured at around 7 kilopascals, comparable to sandy material that can be easily compressed. This finding aligns with previous observations from NASA's 'mole' heat probe, which struggled to dig into the Martian surface due to the clumpy texture. The study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, highlights how discarded spacecraft debris can serve as valuable scientific tools for understanding Martian geology. The research also notes that standard crater-scaling laws may be off by an order of magnitude when dealing with high-density objects impacting low-density surfaces at shallow angles. This work has implications for future missions, as it suggests that debris from spacecraft can be repurposed for impact experiments, providing additional scientific value without requiring new missions. The study also references other space missions that have used impact experiments, such as Hayabusa2's impact on asteroid Ryugu and the DART mission that altered an asteroid's orbit. The findings contribute to a broader understanding of how Mars' surface responds to impacts, which is crucial for future exploration and potential human missions to the planet.