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J. E. Richardson, H. J. Melosh (Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, U. Arizona)
In July of 2005, the Deep Impact spacecraft will release a 370 kg impactor into the path of comet 9P/Tempel 1, and then move to a save distance to observe the resulting collision and it's effects. As part of the mission planning for this event, we have developed a numerical, Monte-Carlo simulation which models (via ``tracer particles") the ejecta plume, ejecta blanket, and impact crater area resulting from a specified impact on an irregularly shaped target body (modeled in 3-dimensional polygon fashion). The target body can be placed in a simple rotation state about one of its principal axes, with the impact site and projectile/target parameters selected by the user. The model is based upon the impact ejecta scaling laws developed by Housen, Schmidt, and Holsapple (1983), modified to more properly simulate late-stage ejection velocities and ejecta plume shape changes (ejection angle variations). Additionally, a target strength parameter has been added to allow the simulation of strength-dominated cratering events as well as the more familiar gravity-dominated cratering events.
This model has two primary uses:
(1) Coupled with an appropriate display module, it will be used in planning the instrument image sequences for the comet flyby spacecraft, allowing us to simulate the acquired images from a number of possible impact scenarios.
(2) It will provide a method for directly modeling the behavior of the actually observed ejecta plume, which will then be used to estimate the mass/density of Temple 1 based upon the effects of the comet's gravity field on crater formation and ejecta plume behavior. In addition, measurements of the observed ejecta plume size and expansion velocity as a function of time can be compared to a family of expected behavior curves produced by our numerical model, in order to improve this mass/density estimation.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 34, #3< br> © 2002. The American Astronomical Soceity.