Mars is slam-dunked by hundreds of basketball-sized meteorites every year

Seismic data from Mars indicates that our neighboring planet is hit about three hundred times a year by meteorites the size of basketballs. A study authored by researchers from Imperial College London and ETH Zurich was able to use data collected from NASA's now-defunct InSight Lander, which is equipped with a seismological …

[sitta_europea]

Hmmmm.

So if we're ever to make stuff on Mars using large scale plant on the surface, the risk of said plant getting hit by a basketball-sized rock doing at least hundreds of km per second is far from negligible.

Maybe it needs an atmosphere.

[Andy Non]

"Maybe it needs an atmosphere."

As I recall (ahem) there is a gigantic machine inside a Martian mountain, the control panel just needs to be touched to activate and will release millions of tons of oxygen into the atmosphere. ;-)

[Boris the Cockroach]

You also find a buried space ship nearby so black the eye kinda slides off it, and it lets out a scream in your mind when it starts up as if something terrible is being born.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Mars's escape velocity is 5 km/s but it would still ruin your day and your point stands.

[Tessier-Ashpool]

Tens of kilometres per second, perhaps. AFAIK there is no solid body in the solar system that travels at hundreds of kilometres per second with respect to Mars. A few comets get beyond 50km/s, by dint of making close approaches to the Sun, where the gravitational field is at a maximum.

[Doctor Syntax]

"You could think of it as a sort of 'cosmic clock' to help us date Martian surfaces,"

That assumes that the rate of bombardment has remained unchanged. Evolution of the solar system might have caused it to change over the timescale we're looking at.

[HuBo]

First of all, I might be available for dating, but I most strongly resent being referred-to as a "surface"! And second, "rate of bombardment", is that your idea of romance???? If it is, then I suggest you take your fishing expedition to Uranus instead, for some 'cosmic clock'!!!! We have standards here on Mars you know! _{(eh-eh-eh, just couldn't resist ... it's Saturday! ahem ... sorry ;^} )}

[Doctor Syntax]

You are GPT4 and I claim my £5

[Will Godfrey]

Looking on the bright side

It has it's good points... as a holiday destination. At least you won't have to worry about being dive-bombed by seagulls.

[Andy Non]

Re: Looking on the bright side

"as a holiday destination"

Wouldn't fancy it, I've heard it lacks atmosphere.

[trindflo]

Who's going to break the news to Elon?

Better tell him to pack some extra sturdy umbrellas.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Who's going to break the news to Elon?

What are the odds of him stepping out onto the surface and getting hit by a basketball sized meteorite?

Or may be that should be what are the odds of him getting to Mars in the first place!

[DJV]

"size of basketballs"

What I want to know is: Who (or what) is filtering out all the ones that are larger or smaller than basketballs?

[Bebu]

If God is in his heaven...

What are the odds of him [Musk's] stepping out onto the surface and getting hit by a basketball sized meteorite? A dead cert I would hope.

Failing any such benevolent miracles the odds are pretty much in his favour.

With around 300 impacts per year [terrestrial or martian?] distributed over 1.44×10⁸ km² or imagining Musk occupying a square metre that's 1.44×10¹⁴ m² ie 144 trillion other places for a space rock not to fall on Space Karen (and more than three hundred other days when he's not in that location.)

what are the odds of him [Musk's] getting to Mars in the first place? Not high enough for my liking! We can but hope and keep quiet about his kidneys packing up, on the journey to Mars. I cannot imagine a more deserving recipient for peritoneal dialysis.

But the real answer is a few months after he faces off, in the ring, against Zuckerberg. Two additions to head a little list.

[Bebu]

Clarifying

I would insert The meteorite impacts cause high acoustic frequency marsquakes, distinct from other seismic events if acoustic is the word that correctly describes seismic vibrations. Otherwise the frequency of impacts is confusable with the frequency of the seismic waves produced.

The actual planetary year intended isn't specified in: Mars is hit by meteorites between 280 and 360 times a year.

[herman]

Cricket

Mars needs big white robots with cricket bats to whack the incoming rocks away.

[Anonymous Coward]

So

Painting targets on the Muskville Mars outpost is a no no then?

[Clarecats]

"Incidentally, meteorites are also theorized to be a useful source of creating oxygen on Mars itself rather than importing it or the materials needed to make oxygen from Earth, so being able to find more of them would be useful if humans ever actually colonize the planet."

The planet Mars is inferior to the asteroid belt (means it is closer to the Sun) and the asteroids nearer to Mars are rocky, but the asteroids further from Mars, on the Jupiter-grazing edge of the belt, are icy. To get water to Mars we would need to go the further edge of the belt, nudge or push meteors through the belt, somehow avoiding collisions, and point them at Mars.

[Bilby]

> To get water to Mars we would need to go the further edge of the belt, nudge or push meteors through the belt, somehow avoiding collisions, and point them at Mars.

"somehow avoiding collisions"? The asteroid belt is almost entirely empty space. You would need to be astronomically unlucky for a meteor you pushed through the belt to hit something else, before it reached Mars.