The Production of Small Primary Craters on Mars and the Moon

TL;DR

This study models small primary crater production on Mars and the Moon using terrestrial fireball data, successfully reproducing observed crater distributions and supporting the use of small craters for dating planetary surfaces.

Contribution

It introduces a new model linking terrestrial fireball flux to small crater production, accounting for atmospheric effects and validating crater dating methods.

Findings

Crater size-frequency distribution downturn at 10-20 cm diameter.

Crater counts indicate constant cratering rates over millions of years.

Model suggests secondary craters have minimal impact on age estimates.

Abstract

We model the primary crater production of small (D < 100 m) primary craters on Mars and the Moon using the observed annual flux of terrestrial fireballs. From the size-frequency distribution (SFD) of meteor diameters, with appropriate velocity distributions for Mars and the Moon, we are able to reproduce martian and lunar crater-count chronometry systems (isochrons) in both slope and magnitude. We include an atmospheric model for Mars that accounts for the deceleration, ablation, and fragmentation of meteors. We find that the details of the atmosphere or the fragmentation of the meteors do not strongly influence our results. The downturn in the crater SFD from atmospheric filtering is predicted to occur at D ~ 10-20 cm, well below the downturn observed in the distribution of fresh craters detected by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) or the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) Context Camera (CTX). Crater counts conducted on the ejecta blanket of Zunil crater on Mars and North Ray crater on the Moon yielded crater SFDs with similar slopes and ages (~1 Ma, and ~58 Ma, respectively) to our model, indicating that the average cratering rate has been constant on these bodies over these time periods. Since our Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate that the existing crater chronology systems can be applied to date young surfaces using small craters on the Moon and Mars, we conclude that the signal from secondary craters in the isochrons must be relatively small, as our Monte Carlo model only generates primary craters.