CRATER COUNTING CASE STUDY

Project Leader: Professor Gretchen Benedix, Curtin University

To understand planetary formation and evolution, and the history of our solar system, we need to look further than our own unique planet, and see how it fits into the ‘bigger picture’.  We already know quite a lot about Mars, and have satellite imagery of the entire planet.  Planetary scientist Professor Gretchen Benedix at Curtin’s Space Science and Technology Centre is working out how old different features on the Martian surface are just by looking at them.  But her method needs Pawsey’s newest GPU clusters to count the millions of overlapping crater impacts that reveal Mars’ history.

The Challenge

The craters on a planet’s surface tell its history.  The more craters, the older the surface since a volcanic or climactic event wiped it ‘clean’.  Older craters bear the scars of newer impacts on top of them. Crater counting is the principal tool used by astrogeologists to determine the surface ages of planets, our Moon and even large asteroids throughout the solar system.  Until now, the technique has relied on scientists painstakingly identifying and counting craters by hand. CONTINUE READING PAWSEY SUPERCOMPUTING CENTRE