Impact Cratering Model for the Neptunian Satellites

ROSSIGNOLI, N. L.; DI SISTO R.P.

Flagstaff

Congreso; 14th Planetary Crater Consortium Meeting; 2023

The Neptunian satellite system comprises intriguing, mostly unexplored worlds and poses special challenges for cratering models. The only mission to have explored this system was Voyager 2 in 1989, but only Triton, its largest member, was imaged with sufficient resolution to obtain crater counts in several regions [1, 2]. This large, synchronously rotating retrograde satellite was found to have a young surface and a crater distribution mostly concentrated on its leading hemisphere [1, 2]. These features have motivated multiple studies to determine its main impactor population and its surface age. In this work, we present our impact cratering model for the seven regular inner Neptunian satellites and Triton, considering only heliocentric impactors. In the case of Triton we compare our results with the observed crater counts on the highly cratered terrain ’Area 1’ publishedin Strom et al. [1] and the crater counts obtained from reprocessed Voyager images presented in Schenk & Zahnle [2] and from this comparison we constrain its surface age