Shock waves in cosmic space and planetary materials

Abstract

Shock waves can be produced in the Earth’s atmosphere and near vacuum of cosmic space as ‘‘collision (as shock metamorphism)’’ and ‘‘collisionless (as plasma)’’ shock events, respectively. Collisionless shock forms when the ‘‘solar wind’’ hits the ‘‘magnetic fields’’ of all the planets and comets which were found by many spacecrafts and Voyager missions as intense Alfven plasma waves. Main causes to generate the collision shock waves are bombardments of the meteorites (or asteroids) against the meteorite itself (including interplanetary dust particles), the Earth, the Moon, and Mars. Material evidence of the collision shock has been studied by shock metamorphism. Because of randomly distributed fragments of meteorites and lunar regolith, shock metamorphic study to the planetary materials should require the standard impact materials from artificial and terrestrial impact craters. Collision and collisionless shocks onto the airless lunar surface produce the regolith soils with agglutinates and solar wind components. Shock waves (including space debris) are considered to play a significant role in space environments of the Space Station and the Lunar and Martian Base projects for human (or robot) activities.