Asteroids can cause catastrophe on Mars and scientists are worried. Here's why
Asteroids are small rocky objects that orbit the sun and pose a threat to the planets in the solar system
Mars is believed to be more prone to devastation from asteroids than what was believed earlier. Studies suggest that this may pose a risk to future Mars missions that have been planned to investigate whether Mars can be an alternative for human inhabitation.
What is the risk posed by asteroids?
Asteroids are small rocky objects that orbit the sun and pose a threat to the planets in the solar system. Back in 2013, the Chelyabinsk meteor caused devastation on Earth by injuring over 1,000 people and causing more than $33 millionworth of infrastructure damage.
Since Mars is located directly adjacent to the main belt, which is a region of rocky debris between Mars and Jupiter's orbits without any planets, it is more at risk of devastation from asteroids.
What do studies suggest?
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A doctoral student in astronomy at Nanjing University China, Yufan Fane Zhou has taken the daunting task of analysing the asteroids that have the potential to cause damage to Mars. He has given them the name CAPHAs, which is short for close approach potentially hazardous asteroids.
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Study co-author Zhou said, as per LiveScience, "As human visits to Mars become more frequent, the threat posed by Mars-CAPHAs may increasingly be taken seriously." On the contrary, he believes that these asteroids can further help understand theenvironment on Mars in greater detail and aid astronomers in understanding the history of the planet.
Is Mars at a greater risk of devastation from asteroids than Earth?
Studying the impact of CAPHAs on Mars was a mammoth exercise for Zhou and his team. They created a simulation along with all eight planets of the solar system and asteroids for the same.
The main belt is where all of these asteroids were first formed. The scientists then classified around 10,000 asteroids as "near-gap" by examining each asteroid's distance from six known gaps, which were asteroid-poor areas within the main belt where runaway rocks could potentially slip out.
It was deduced that roughly 52 asteroids wander close to Mars every Earth year, which is approximately 2.6 times more than the asteroids that approach Earth every year.
(With inputs from agencies)
