[meteorite-list] Martian Meteorite Heat Ablation?

From: lebofsky at lpl.arizona.edu <lebofsky_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 12:47:03 -0700 (MST)
Message-ID: <1282.71.226.60.25.1186602423.squirrel_at_timber.lpl.arizona.edu>

Chris beat me to this.

The scale height of Earth's atmosphere is about 6 km and Mars is about 11.
So, in the range where meteors "burn up" and where aerobraking is
important, th martian atmosphere is comparable to Earth's. I thought that
it was still a little thinner than Earth, but will not argue with that
(though I think that this was part of the problem with Beagle).

Larry

On Wed, August 8, 2007 12:24 pm, Mark Crawford wrote:
> On a similar point... what size would meteorites have to be to have a
> chance of being found on the moon? Small ones would vapourise, large ones
> would vapourise a lot of the sirface material... is it possible that any
> recognisable fragments would survive?
>
> Chris Peterson wrote:
>
>
>> But Mars does have an atmosphere. Its surface air density is about the
>> same as Earth's at a height of 31 km, and far more than the density in
>> the region of Earth's atmosphere where we typically see meteors.
>>
>
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Received on Wed 08 Aug 2007 03:47:03 PM PDT