Moons

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bdewoody

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Just watched the "what if the earth had no moon" program on the History Channel and began to wonder if it would be possible some time in the not too distant future to nudge one of the larger asteroids like Ceres into a permanent orbit around Mars. The idea being to stabilize Mars rotational wobble and maybe even stir up some tectonic activity. Or is the axis tilt variation so slow that there would be very little benefit in doing such a thing to help establish a long term human presence on the red planet?
 
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MeteorWayne

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I haven't looked it up yet, but I believe the mass of Ceres is too small to have a substantial effect, and you'd have to really look at the dynamics of the obliquity effects on Mars. I'll check more later, just catching up now.

Oh, and BTW "nudging Ceres into a Martian orbit is nor a trivial matter :) IT's orbit is quite different!
 
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scottb50

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MeteorWayne":3f7myfvg said:
I haven't looked it up yet, but I believe the mass of Ceres is too small to have a substantial effect, and you'd have to really look at the dynamics of the obliquity effects on Mars. I'll check more later, just catching up now.

Oh, and BTW "nudging Ceres into a Martian orbit is nor a trivial matter :) IT's orbit is quite different!

Based on it's size and current orbit it would be an epic endeavor to move it to Mars. It would probably be easier to move a moon of Jupiter.
 
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willpittenger

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Well, on Nova they mentioned that Mars' previous tectonic activity might have been triggered by a orbiting asteroid. As for what happened to that rock? Well, the suggestion was that it got too close and hit the northern hemisphere, which just happens to be much lower in altitude than the southern.
 
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