The impact of Ranger VIII gives us the first chance to test the crater-forming process on the moon and to ascertain the existence of gravity scaling.

Introduction: The response of organic matter to impact events is of widespread interest for what it tells us about the likelihood of survival of life and/or fossilized biological signatures [1,2,3] following impacts. This is relevant to the history of life on Earth, and to our exploration of other solar system bodies, including Mars. The Tertiary Haughton Impact Structure, Cana-dian High Arctic...

Impact diamonds were found in several inipactites from the Ries crater. Geriiiaiiy including fallout and fallback (crater f i l l ) suevites. a glass bomb, impact melt i-ock and shocked gneiss. These diamonds formed two distinct grain size populations: 50-300 pii apographitic. platy aggregates with surface ornamentation and etching that \vere observed using optical and scanning electron microsc...

We use hydrodynamic modelling combined with known data on mantle melting behaviour to examine the potential for decompression melting of lithosphere beneath a large terrestrial impact crater. This mechanism may generate sufficient quantity of melt to auto-obliterate the crater. Melting would initiate almost instantaneously, but the effects of such massive mantle melting may trigger long-lived m...

Boguslawsky crater (72.9°S, 43.3°E, 100 km in diameter) is a primary target for the Luna-Glob mission. The crater has a morphologically smooth (at the resolution of WAC images), flat, and horizontal floor, which is about 55–60 km in diameter. Two ellipses were selected as specific candidate landing areas on the floor: the western ellipse is centered at 72.9°S, 41.3°E and the eastern ellipse is ...

Introduction: Recent studies suggest that impacts into highly porous target materials require a new cratering regime controlled by compressional effects (1). Such research is important for interpreting the geologic history of small bodies and for the upcoming Deep Impact mission in 2005. An alternative view (2) suggests that even highly porous targets (density of 0.2g/cc) undergo gravity contro...

The crater formation due to the impact of a water droplet onto a granular bed has been experimentally investigated. Three parameters were tuned: the impact velocity, the size of the droplet, and the size of the grains. The aim is to determine the influence of the kinetic energy on the droplet pattern. The shape of the crater depends on the kinetic energy at the moment the droplet starts to impa...

The 10.5 km diameter Bosumtwi crater in Ghana, West Africa, is the most likely source crater for the Ivory Coast tektites, as the tektites and the crater have the same age (1.07 Ma), and there are close similarities between the isotopic and chemical compositions of the tektites and crater rocks. The crater is excavated in 2.1–2.2 Ga old metasediments and metavolcanics of the Birimian Supergroup...

The formation of central uplifts in complex impact craters is poorly understood. It is generally accepted that a weakening mechanism is a necessary precursor to accommodate such a large movement of rock. It has been hypothesized that impact-generated melt may have a significant role in weakening the rock of a crater floor to allow for uplift, but it is uncertain if this melt rock is a product o...