Implantation of Martian materials in the inner solar system by a mega impact on Mars

Abstract

Observations and meteorites indicate that the Martian materials are enigmatically distributed within the inner solar system. A mega impact on Mars creating a Martian hemispheric dichotomy and the Martian moons can potentially eject Martian materials. A recent work has shown that the mega-impact-induced debris is potentially captured as the Martian Trojans and implanted in the asteroid belt. However, the amount, distribution, and composition of the debris has not been studied. Here, using hydrodynamic simulations, we report that a large amount of debris ($\sim 1\%$ of Mars' mass), including Martian crust/mantle and the impactor's materials ($\sim 20:80$), are ejected by a dichotomy-forming impact, and distributed between $\sim 0.5-3.0$ astronomical units. Our result indicates that unmelted Martian mantle debris ($\sim 0.02\%$ of Mars' mass) can be the source of Martian Trojans, olivine-rich asteroids in the Hungarian region and the main asteroid belt, and some of which even hit early Earth. A mega impact can naturally implant Martian mantle materials within the inner solar system.

8 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJL

References in corpus (9)

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• NEOWISE Reactivation Mission Year One: Preliminary Asteroid Diameters and Albedos
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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Early formation of moons around large trans-Neptunian objects via giant impacts
• On the Impact Origin of Phobos and Deimos IV: Volatile Depletion
• Formation of moons and equatorial ridge around top-shaped asteroids after surface landslide
• Modification of the composition and density of Mercury from late accretion
• Escape and accretion by cratering impacts: Formulation of scaling relations for high-speed ejecta
• Mars in the aftermath of a colossal impact
• Using Mars co-orbitals to estimate the importance of rotation-induced YORP break-up events in Earth co-orbital space
• Erosion and accretion by cratering impacts on rocky and icy bodies