Planetary science. Strange doings on a NEAR-struck asteroid

According to Newton’s second law of motion, the rate of change of the momentum of an object is the net external force acting on it. The total change in momentum between two timepoints thus depends on both the external force acting on it and the time over which it acts. Describing this mathematically, the total change of an object’s motion is proportional to the force vector and the time over which it is applied. This product is called impulse.
Additionally, it can be shown that the total...

When two or more objects collide with each other, they can stick together to form one single composite object (after collision). The total mass of the object after the collision is the sum of the masses of the original objects, and it moves with a velocity dictated by the conservation of momentum. Although the system's total momentum remains constant, the kinetic energy decreases, and thus such a collision is an inelastic collision. Most of the collisions between objects in daily life are...

Elastic collision of a system demands conservation of both momentum and kinetic energy. To solve problems involving one-dimensional elastic collisions between two objects, the equations for conservation of momentum and conservation of internal kinetic energy can be used. For the two objects, the sum of momentum before the collision equals the total momentum after the collision. An elastic collision conserves internal kinetic energy, and so the sum of kinetic energies before the collision equals...

The gravitational acceleration of an object near the Earth's surface is called the acceleration due to gravity. It can be measured by conducting simple experiments on Earth. However, such an experiment is impossible to conduct on the surface of other planets.
Astronomical observations are thus used to measure the acceleration due to gravity on other planets. This can be determined by observing the effect of a planet's gravity on objects close to it. The crucial factor that helps in this...

The Moon orbits around the Earth. In turn, the Earth (and other planets) orbit the Sun. The space directly above our atmosphere is filled with artificial satellites in orbit. One can examine the circular orbit, the simplest kind of orbit, to understand the relationship between the speed and the period of planets and satellites with respect to their positions and the bodies that they orbit.
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) first suggested that the Earth and all other planets orbit the Sun in...

In an experiment conducted during a Mars mission, a rover propels a projectile with an initial velocity, and the projectile rebounds after colliding with the Martian surface. To ascertain the maximum height attained by the projectile after this collision, the known restitution coefficient and acceleration due to gravity are employed.
By designating the launch point as the origin and utilizing kinematic equations, the vertical component of the projectile's velocity at the point of impact is...