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Impact Gardening on Ceres
Author(s) -
Costello E. S.,
Ghent R. R.,
Lucey P. G.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2021gl092960
Subject(s) - regolith , sublimation (psychology) , astrobiology , geology , environmental science , latitude , atmospheric sciences , geodesy , physics , psychology , psychotherapist
We model impact gardening on Ceres and find that it is orders of magnitude less intense than impact gardening on Earth's Moon. At Ceres' equator, gardening is too shallow to compete with sublimation as a control on the depth to ice. At high latitudes, impact gardening will disturb the top centimeter of ice over 1 Ga but could not contribute to the disruption of thick ice deposits. Because impact gardening is weak on Ceres compared to the Moon, we also predict that the meter and smaller scale surface texture of Ceres may be significantly different from the lunar surface. Regolith may be much thinner on Ceres and the top meter may be significantly less dominated by fine‐grained regolith material.