Phobos Impacting Mars

[All Seeing Eye]

I've read that Phobos will eventually impact Mars. Does anyone have any idea what effect this will have on Mars? Would the majority of the Asteroid/Moon survive the strike? Would it be big enough to throw dust into the Martian atmosphere and blot out the Sun?

Depending what the answers are depends on what my next question is going to be.

 

[Chaos Descending]

It is more likely to break up into a planetary ring than to actually hit the planet itself.

 

[sojourner]

Not much "impact" on Mars I don't think. A large crater. It wouldn't "survive" except as some large chunks. Not sure Mars has enough atmosphere to support a dust cloud for long, not any worse than the planet wide sand storms that already happen occasionally.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

It is more likely to break up into a planetary ring than to actually hit the planet itself.

Ok let's say it was nudged towards Mars and impacted that way and didn't break up into a planetary ring. What would the effects on Mars be? and would the Asteroid/Moon burn up on entering the Martian atmosphere?

 

[Noname Given]

Well, it won't be impacting Mars anytime soon:

Phobos is nearing Mars at a rate of 1.8 m every hundred years; at that rate, it will either crash into Mars in 50 million years or break up into a ring.

Source: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Mar_Phobos

 

[Robert Maxwell]

It is more likely to break up into a planetary ring than to actually hit the planet itself.

Ok let's say it was nudged towards Mars and impacted that way and didn't break up into a planetary ring. What would the effects on Mars be? and would the Asteroid/Moon burn up on entering the Martian atmosphere?

Phobos is more the size of an asteroid than a moon. It'll leave a nice big crater but that's about it. I don't think it would have any surprising long-term effects on Mars. The Martian atmosphere isn't thick enough to make it burn up to any appreciable degree.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

What are the possibilities of knocking Phobos out of Mars orbit and placing it in Earth orbit?

My thinking would be to move it into Earth Orbit and then begin hollowing it out. The tunnels and rooms within the Asteroid would be reinforced and stocked up with supplies and resources for a Martian colony.

After years of supplying the Asteroid in Earth orbit it would be knocked out of Earth orbit and moved back to Mars where it would be made to impact Mars as slowly as possible.

The slow impact would be done by having the Asteroid enter Mars' solar orbital path in front of Mars travelling at just under 11000 mph, as Mars approaches the Asteroid and begins to overtake it it would enter Mars atmosphere. If you catch my drift.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

That sounds like an absurdly expensive project with little or no practical value whatsoever. Phobos is over 9 miles in diameter. You are not going to just "hollow it out." It may be small for a moon but it's still pretty damn big in engineering terms.

We would be much better off just building a straight-up colony ship.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

You are not going to just "hollow it out."

So why am I always reading articles talking about hollowing out asteroids? If any asteroid is worth hollowing out it's Phobos due to it's size and close proximity to Earth.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Please, link me to some of these articles, and I want to see how we are going to economically hollow out an asteroid in the near term.

Sure, it's possible, but with our current level of technology it's incredibly impractical to bother. You'd first have to drag it into Earth orbit, which means making a trip to it in the first place, expending shittons of fuel pushing it toward Earth, then hefting people and equipment up to do the work--meaning support structures, food, etc. etc. etc. All that would be better spend just building a damn ship.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

If time is not a problem then the Asteroid could be moved with little fuel and not "shittons" of it.
As for hollowing it whilst in orbit there are a multitude of positives for doing this.
The Asteroid itself could have valuable metals and minerals worth Billions of Dollars (such as Iron/Nickel/Cobalt/Platinum) which would actually pay for the work being carried out so it would pay for itself with possibly profit as well.
It's far easier to chip away at an asteroid rather than fix together a large vessel. Whilst the Asterods resources could pay for the work being done building a ship would be lost money and paid for by the taxpayers.

 

[sojourner]

To move Phobos out of Mars orbit would require a shitton of either time and fuel using current technology. If technology has advanced enough to make it practical to bring it to earth orbit that same technology would have made it redundant to do so. Your better off trying to grab an NEO asteroid. Much easier to capture in a much sooner time frame technology/time wise.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Exactly. In fact, since we're always tracking asteroids that will make close flybys (checking for ones that could potentially hit us), those would be far better candidates for grabbing and doing mining operations on. Heading all the way out to fucking Mars to hijack one of its moons and then bring it back to Earth is just a solution in search of a problem.

 

[Christopher]

What are the possibilities of knocking Phobos out of Mars orbit and placing it in Earth orbit?

My thinking would be to move it into Earth Orbit and then begin hollowing it out. The tunnels and rooms within the Asteroid would be reinforced and stocked up with supplies and resources for a Martian colony.

Wouldn't be that hard to reposition Phobos, since it's so small; in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, both Phobos and Deimos are moved out of orbit using 21st-century technology. But getting it from Mars orbit to Earth orbit -- that's a lot of delta-vee, so it wouldn't be that easy. There are plenty of Near-Earth asteroids that could be more easily moved into a Terrestrial orbit.

After years of supplying the Asteroid in Earth orbit it would be knocked out of Earth orbit and moved back to Mars where it would be made to impact Mars as slowly as possible.

Why impact? Makes more sense to put it in orbit. Or better yet, to leave it there anyway. Makes a good place for a ship to dock before sending down the landing capsules.

That sounds like an absurdly expensive project with little or no practical value whatsoever. Phobos is over 9 miles in diameter. You are not going to just "hollow it out." It may be small for a moon but it's still pretty damn big in engineering terms..

Actually it wouldn't be that hard. Phobos is probably made largely of ice, so if you mined that out for water, you'd be left with a lot of interior voids. Sure, the idea of Phobos as a colony ship is bizarrely impractical -- like I said, if you were going to use an asteroid as a ship to Mars, it'd make vastly more sense to pick an NEA that's already close to Earth -- but it could be converted in situ into a space habitat.

 

[MANT!]

As to asteroid habitats..it's been discussed in scientific journals in the past..

Asteroid mining and movement is possible..one can propel the asteroid using a mass driver..all the while excavating it..but it's a crude method..and could be dangerous as one is ejecting iron and rock as reaction mass...



One thing, it's easier to get an asteroid from the asteroid belt than to use Phobos or Demos as you won't need to get the asteroid from Mar's gravity field..


the tech is out there to do this ,but it would be at enormous cost..

Something no nation or group of nations is interested in doing for the near future..

 

[Christopher]

One thing, it's easier to get an asteroid from the asteroid belt than to use Phobos or Demos as you won't need to get the asteroid from Mar's gravity field..

That depends on where you want the asteroid to be. As I said, if you want to capture an asteroid into Earth orbit, there are thousands of Near-Earth asteroids that would be easier to capture than anything out in the Main Belt, simply because their orbits are so much closer to ours so there'd be less delta-vee required. Since the Main Belt is farther than Mars, the added energy cost of decelerating a Main Belt asteroid to the point that it would fall into an Earthlike orbit might be just as bad as the energy cost of accelerating Phobos or Deimos out of Mars orbit and then decelerating it to fall into an Earthlike orbit.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

What's the likelihood of using a nuclear detonation to knock Phobos out of Mars orbit? At some point during Phobos' orbit around Mars and Mars' orbit around the Sun Phobos is heading towards the direction of Earth, at that moment a nuclear detonation of maybe several could give the Asteroid added thrust which would have it continue on it's journey towards Earth.

 

[diankra]

What's the likelihood of using a nuclear detonation to knock Phobos out of Mars orbit? At some point during Phobos' orbit around Mars and Mars' orbit around the Sun Phobos is heading towards the direction of Earth, at that moment a nuclear detonation of maybe several could give the Asteroid added thrust which would have it continue on it's journey towards Earth.

About as likely as knocking the Moon out of Earth orbit with an exploding nuclear waste dump.

 

[Shatnertage]

Didn't that happen back in 1999?

 

[sevenstars]

If they move it into Earth orbit, I demand that they change its name.