- 3070 - MARS - size of the crater, math? - There is a satellite circling the planet Mars. It takes a photo of a crater on the surface. How big is the crater?
--------------- 3070 - MARS - size of the crater, math
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- The “High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment” (HiRISE) camera on
“Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter” acquired an image of the “Opportunity
Rover” on the southwest rim of "Santa Maria" crater on New Year's Eve 2010.
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- “Opportunity” arrived at the western edge of Santa Maria crater in mid-December. 2009. It will spend about two months investigating rocks there. That investigation will
take Opportunity into the beginning of 2010, its eighth year on Mars.
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- Opportunity is imaging the crater interior to better understand the geometry of rock layers and the meteor impact process on Mars. Santa Maria is a relatively young, 90 meter diameter impact crater, but old enough to have collected sand dunes in its interior.
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- The shape of the crater is irregular, but taking the average of several diameter measurements with a ruler on the photo gives a diameter of about 55 millimeters.
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- Since this corresponds to 90 meters according to the scale of this image which is
90 meters / 55 mm = 1.8 meters/millimeter.
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- What is the circumference of the rim of this crater? Using a piece of string on the photograph we obtain an answer of about 200 millimeters. Using the above scale the distance in meters is 200 mm x 1.8 meters/mm = 360 meters.
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- The rover can travel about 100 meters in one day. How long will it take the rover to travel once around this crater? 400 meters * (1 day/100 meters) = 4 days.
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- A comfortable walking speed is about 100 meters per minute. How long would it take a human to stroll around the edge of this crater? 400 meters * (1 minute/100 meters) = 4 minutes.
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- Rover is another name for slow. Otherwise it would have been named racer.
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March 1, 2021 MARS - size of the crater 3070
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