Lunar Secondary Craters and Estimated Ejecta Block Sizes Reveal a Scale-dependent Fragmentation Trend

TL;DR

This study analyzes lunar secondary craters to understand ejecta fragment sizes and velocities, revealing a scale-dependent fragmentation trend that varies with impact size, which challenges existing impact fragmentation theories.

Contribution

It provides new constraints on ejecta fragment sizes and velocities, demonstrating a scale-dependent trend in ejecta fragmentation not predicted by current theories.

Findings

Maximum ejecta sizes decrease steeply with velocity for larger impacts

Ejecta fragment size-velocity distribution follows a power law with variable exponent

Similar fragmentation trends observed on icy moons Europa and Ganymede

Abstract

Planetary impact events eject large volumes of surface material. Crater excavation processes are difficult to study, and in particular the details of individual ejecta fragments are not well understood. A related, enduring issue in planetary mapping is whether a given crater resulted from a primary impact (asteroid or comet) or instead is a secondary crater created by an ejecta fragment. With mapping and statistical analyses of six lunar secondary crater fields (including Orientale, Copernicus, and Kepler) we provide three new constraints on these issues: 1) estimation of the maximum secondary crater size as a function of distance from a primary crater on the Moon, 2) estimation of the size and velocity of ejecta fragments that formed these secondaries, and 3) estimation of the fragment size ejected at escape velocity. Through this analysis, we confirmed and extended a suspected scale-dependent trend in ejecta size-velocity distributions. Maximum ejecta fragment sizes fall off much more steeply with increasing ejection velocity for larger primary impacts (compared to smaller primary impacts). Specifically, we characterize the maximum ejecta sizes for a given ejection velocity with a power law, and find the velocity exponent varies between approximately -0.3 and -3 for the range of primary craters investigated here (0.83-660 km in diameter). Data for the jovian moons Europa and Ganymede confirm similar trends for icy surfaces. This result is not predicted by analytical theories of formation of Grady-Kipp fragments or spalls during impacts, and suggests that further modeling investigations are warranted to explain this scale-dependent effect.