354E-382-Martian Debris

Martian Trojan asteroids have stable orbits around the Sun, leading and trailing the red planet by 60 degrees, where the Sun's and Mars's gravity are balanced. For some time astronomers have considered it unlikely that these asteroids wandered in from the asteroid belt. Recently, Dr. David Polishook of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel led a group of researchers who published a paper in the journal Nature Astronomy which sets forth evidence that a group of 7 Martian Trojan Asteroids were blasted from the Martian surface when a large asteroid impacted the red planet early in the history of the solar system. The impact more than 4 billion years or so ago which blasted loose a mile diameter chunk of Mars and gave it a speed of the more than the 3 mi/s required to escape the red planet gives us an insight into the level of violence which occurred before our solar system came into it's present relatively calm state.