Secondary craters from large impacts on Europa and Ganymede: Ejecta size–velocity distributions on icy worlds, and the scaling of ejected blocks

We have mapped fields of secondary craters around three large primary craters on Europa and Ganymede and estimated the size and velocity of the fragments that formed the secondaries using updated scaling equations for ice impacts. We characterize the upper envelope of the fragment size–velocity distribution to obtain a function for the largest fragments at a given ejection velocity. Power-law velocity exponents found in our study of icy satellite secondary fields are compared to the exponents found for similar studies of mercurian, lunar, and martian craters; for all but basin-scale impacts, fragment size decreases more slowly with increasing ejection velocity than on rocky bodies. Spallation theory provides estimates of the size of ejected spall plates at a given velocity, but this theory predicts fragments considerably smaller than are necessary to form most of our observed secondaries. In general, ejecta fragment sizes scale with primary crater diameter and decrease with increasing ejection velocity, υej, by 1/υej or greater, and point-source scaling implies a relation between the two. The largest crater represented in any of these studies, Gilgamesh on Ganymede, exhibits a relatively steep velocity dependence. Extrapolating the results to the escape speed for each icy moon yields the size of the largest fragment that could later re-impact to form a so-called sesquinary crater, either on the parent moon or a neighboring satellite. We find that craters above 2 km in diameter on Europa and Ganymede are unlikely to be sesquinaries.