Impact Structures on Venus as a Result of Asteroid Destruction in the Atmosphere

Abstract

Venus’ thick atmosphere is capable of destroying kilometer-sized bodies such as asteroids, creating various types of traces on the surface. While larger cosmic bodies are able to reach the surface, creating impact craters or crater dispersion fields, smaller bodies effectively transfer the initial kinetic energy into the atmosphere, resulting in an “atmospheric explosion” at some altitude. In these cases, the most visible marks on the surface of Venus are created by atmospheric shock waves and the flow of gas behind the shock fronts reflected from the solid surface. The transitional sizes of impactors that break up in the atmosphere but reach the surface give rise to clusters of craters. The paper presents the first results of three-dimensional calculations of the destruction of rocky asteroids in the atmosphere of Venus, indicating significant differences from simple two-dimensional axisymmetric calculations.