Momentum enhancement due to hypervelocity impacts into rocky targets: Experiments to explore scale effects
Abstract
Small asteroids might be diverted from an impending collision with Earth by the impact of a spacecraft - the cratering ejecta from the impact imparts an as-yet-unknown amount of momentum change to affect the deflection. We are conducting laboratory impact experiments with decimeter- to meter-scale rocky targets to directly measure the amount of momentum change and allow scaling up to the sizes of actual near-Earth asteroids.
- Publication:
-
EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2019
- Pub Date:
- September 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019EPSC...13..315D