Wouldn't a large scale asteroid impact on Mars be a very bad thing?

Question

Question for any of you with insight into the astronomical world: Isn't a large scale impact on Mars a BAD thing for humanity? In the news they keep saying how "excited scientists are," but couldn't this set back our society for potentially decades? Wouldn't a large scale impact make the Mars environment too hostile for human exploration, and being that it's really the only planet other than ours that we can explore safely, leave us with a great deal of lost opportunity until the planet stabilized?

Obviously there are still many other bodies worth exploring, but Mars I'd say is the most reasonable foreign body other than our moon. Even to go to the Jovian moon's would take a great deal more advancement and travel time.

Answer 1

It wouldn't be bad, since the conditions of a life killer asteroid on Earth are different conditions than what the same asteroid would do on Mars. Mars will still be there and explorable after something the size of an asteroid hits it.
If you are thinking of the amount of dust kicked up, remember that the atmosphere is thinner and the gravity lower, so not as much dust would hang around to obscure the planet as you would think.

Answer 2

The results of an asteroid impact on Mars would not be harmful to us in hardly any ways. The worst that could happen, is that a global dust storm could cover the planet and make our observations difficult.
Unless the asteroid was quite large, the effect on Mars would be negligible. Perhaps, a local cloud of dust and debris, and a crater, but planets the size of Mars can deal with asteroids. Though it's atmosphere is thin, it still exists, and Mars does burn up meteors.
Another possible downside would be if the asteroid knocked out a Mars Exploration Rover, but the chances of this are absurdly thin. More likely, a nearby asteroid impact would cover solar panels with dust.(This also is a very slim chance)
Our exploration of Mars would not be affected in the least. Unless a body hundreds of miles across slammed into the Red Planet and completely terraformed it, the effect of a small asteroid would wear off. The martian weather(wind, frost, and dust), would erode at the crater, and eventually it would blend into the Martian landscape. Furthermore, any dust that was created would perhaps circle the globe, but then it too would either settle on the surface or remain suspended in the atmosphere.

Answer 3

If you're thinking in terms of the "dinosaur killer" on Earth, there's no comparison.

The one that will miss Mars (1 in 75 chance and lengthening) is 160 metres or so in diameter, The one that struck Earth was kilometres across.

On Earth, atmospheric conditions are very different to Mars. Even a large impact on Mars would have little long -term effect compared to here.

And the Cretaceous impact on Earth didn't actually harm the planet. It just made things difficult for the creatures that were here at the time. Remember, many survived and many more evolved (they were small) in the time following. A meteoric impact on a planet isn't a bad thing, necessarily. Unless you're under it.

Answer 4

Not really.

Earth is only hit by an object large enough to do any significant damage every few tens of thousands or years. Anything capable of preventing someone from exploring the Earth likely only happens every few hundred million years. Nothing in the past 3 billion years has hit with enough force to take out the atmosphere or oceans.

Mars only has a third the gravity of Earth so (even being closer to the astroid belt) one wouldn't expect it to be hit any more often than the Earth. It also doesn't show cratering within recent history so not much change of something hitting by the time we explore it.

Finally, for most purposes even a large impact on Mars isn't going to do much. Mars has almost no atmosphere (0.7% of Earths) so having it blown away wouldn't make it any more difficult to explore it. It doesn't have a liquid core anymore so the surface isn't going to turn to lava or anything.

Even then, we can explore it with probes or wait a few decades. We've been around for over 60,000 years. Our children can explore it just as easily -- if not more easily.

And if Mars is likely to be hit by something capable of destroying it, then Earth is about nine times more likely to be hit by the object -- and it need not be so big as one needed to destroy Mars. i.e. We are far more likely to be unable to explore Mars because we got hit by something able to eliminate life on Earth, than Mars being hit by something able to prevent it's exploration.

Answer 5

Truthfully, there is still a great need for advances in technology before we can even attempt to explore Mars. There is little chance even the largest asteroids will render the Martian weather any more inhospitable than it already is. However, one thing that we CAN learn from such an event that is extremely relevant to us here on Earth is: what are the effects of a large-scale collision--in real time--and what sort of things would we, here on Earth, have to deal with if such an event happened here. We can, by observing what happens to Mars if the impact occurs, be able to make very valuable observations about dust fallout, geologic instability/'Marsquakes', temperature changes and length of difference, etc. Plus, the opportunity for Geologists to watch massive changes in terrain, and the ramifications that such impacts can have (see: Shoemaker-Levy 1994) is extremely exciting, from a scientific view.

Answer 6

The environment on Mars is too hostile for human exploration at present anyway. No oxygen, virtually no atmospheric pressure, deep cold.... If it gets changed a bit by impact (which this one won't because it's too small) that just changes the problem a bit. The first humans on Mars will have to carry their environment with them anyway, so it doesn't make a huge difference what the atmosphere consists of at this stage.

Answer 7

It's not gonna be large scale, regional damage. BUT, the marsian atomosphere is different, so this could effect the damage scale to some degree.
It'd be tough for marsian exploration, yes, the debris and dust could cover the planet and not settle for quite some time.
I think if scientists were concerned about this, they would of made it known to us by now.

Answer 8

Which one might this be? the only one i've got heard that they are nerve-racking approximately is the single which is meant to return close good until now my fiftieth birthday...which isn't for yet another 21 years.