Chris beat me to this. The scale height of Earth's atmosphere is about 6 km and Mars is about 11. So, in the range where meteors "burn up" and where aerobraking is important, th martian atmosphere is comparable to Earth's. I thought that it was still a little thinner than Earth, but will not argue with that (though I think that this was part of the problem with Beagle).
Larry On Wed, August 8, 2007 12:24 pm, Mark Crawford wrote: > On a similar point... what size would meteorites have to be to have a > chance of being found on the moon? Small ones would vapourise, large ones > would vapourise a lot of the sirface material... is it possible that any > recognisable fragments would survive? > > Chris Peterson wrote: > > >> But Mars does have an atmosphere. Its surface air density is about the >> same as Earth's at a height of 31 km, and far more than the density in >> the region of Earth's atmosphere where we typically see meteors. >> > > ______________________________________________ > Meteorite-list mailing list > [email protected] > http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list > > ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
