Venusian impact crater size‐frequency distributions, locations, and preservation states were analyzed to reconstruct the history of resurfacing by tectonism and volcanism. An atmospheric transit model for meteoroids demonstrates that for craters larger than about 30 km, the size‐frequency distribution is close to the atmosphere‐free case. With this result, and assuming that the surface records a crater production population (a catastrophic resurfacing model, CRM), an age of cessation of rapid resurfacing of ∼ 500 Ma is obtained. Crater locations are widely dispersed across Venus and the hypothesis that they are completely spatially random (CSR) cannot be rejected. However, craters that show embayment by plains materials or modification by throughgoing faults (i.e., tectonized) are preferentially found in areas with relatively few craters overall. The primary region where these modified craters are found is the Aphrodite volcanotectonic zone, extending from Ovda Regio on the west to the region east of Atla Regio. These results, together with the appearance of plains material on most crater floors and evidence for complex volcanic stratigraphy, imply that a range of surface ages are recorded by the impact crater population; e.g., the Aphrodite zone is relatively young. An end‐member model (equilibrium resurfacing model, ERM) was developed to quantify resurfacing scenarios. In the ERM, Venus has been resurfacing at an average rate of approximately 1 km2 yr−1. However, the CRM and ERM are idealized end‐member representations of possible resurfacing histories. For both models, the resurfacing rate can be expressed as the product of resurfacing patch area a (normalized by planetary surface area) and the frequency ω of resurfacing events. Numerical simulations of resurfacing showed that there are two solution branches that satisfy the CSR constraint: a < 0.0003 (4° diameter circle ) and a > 0.1 (74° diameter circle). The former range corresponds to resurfacing diameters smaller than the average intercrater distance, whereas the latter is associated with large, infrequent events, resurfacing 10% of the planet every 50 Ma to 100% every 500 Ma. The observed fraction of embayed and tectonized craters further constrains values of a and only values near 0.0003 are admissible. The resurfacing model that best fits all of the statistical and geological constraints has resurfacing with small patches that occurs, in any given geological episode, in only a limited number of regions on the planet.

Iron meteorites are core fragments from differentiated and subsequently disrupted planetesimals. The parent bodies are usually assumed to have formed in the main asteroid belt, which is the source of most meteorites. Observational evidence, however, does not indicate that differentiated bodies or their fragments were ever common there. This view is also difficult to reconcile with the fact that the parent bodies of iron meteorites were as small as 20 km in diameter and that they formed 1-2 Myr earlier than the parent bodies of the ordinary chondrites. Here we show that the iron-meteorite parent bodies most probably formed in the terrestrial planet region. Fast accretion times there allowed small planetesimals to melt early in Solar System history by the decay of short-lived radionuclides (such as 26Al, 60Fe). The protoplanets emerging from this population not only induced collisional evolution among the remaining planetesimals but also scattered some of the survivors into the main belt, where they stayed for billions of years before escaping via a combination of collisions, Yarkovsky thermal forces, and resonances. We predict that some asteroids are main-belt interlopers (such as (4) Vesta). A select few may even be remnants of the long-lost precursor material that formed the Earth.

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The nearly global radar imaging and altimetry measurements of the surface of Venus obtained by the Magellan spacecraft have revealed that deformational features of a wide variety of styles and spatial scales are nearly ubiquitous on the planet. Many areas of Venus record a superposition of different episodes of deformation and volcanism. This deformation is manifested both in areally distributed strain of modest magnitude, such as families of graben and wrinkle ridges at a few to a few tens of kilometers spacing in many plains regions, as well as in zones of concentrated lithospheric extension and shortening. The common coherence of strain patterns over hundreds of kilometers implies that even many local features reflect a crustal response to mantle dynamic processes. Ridge belts and mountain belts, which have characteristic widths and spacings of hundreds of kilometers, represent successive degrees of lithospheric shortening and crustal thickening. The mountain belts of Venus, as on Earth, show widespread evidence for lateral extension both during and following active crustal compression. Venus displays two principal geometrical variations on lithospheric extension: the quasi‐circular coronae (75–2600 km diameter) and broad rises with linear rift zones having dimensions of hundreds to thousands of kilometers. Both are sites of significant volcanic flux, but horizontal displacements may be limited to only a few tens of kilometers. Few large‐offset strike slip faults have been observed, but limited local horizontal shear is accommodated across many zones of crustal stretching or shortening. Several large‐scale tectonic features have extremely steep topographic slopes (in excess of 20°–30°) over a 10‐km horizontal scale; because of the tendency for such slopes to relax by ductile flow in the middle to lower crust, such regions are likely to be tectonically active. In general, the preserved record of global tectonics of Venus does not resemble oceanic plate tectonics on Earth, wherein large, rigid plates are separated by narrow zones of deformation along plate boundaries. Rather tectonic strain on Venus typically involves deformation distributed across broad zones tens to a few hundred kilometers wide separated by comparatively undeformed blocks having dimensions of hundreds of kilometers. These characteristics are shared with actively deforming continental regions on Earth. The styles and scales of tectonic deformation on Venus may be consequences of three differences from the Earth: (1) The absence of a hydrological cycle and significant erosion dictates that multiple episodes of deformation are typically well‐preserved. (2) A high surface temperature and thus a significantly shallower onset of ductile behavior in the middle to lower crust gives rise to a rich spectrum of smaller‐scale deformational features. (3) A strong coupling of mantle convection to the upper mantle portion of the lithosphere, probably because Venus lacks a mantle low‐viscosity zone, leads to crustal stress fields that are coherent over large...

The dependence of asteroid spectral class (and inferred composition and thermal history) on heliocentric radius has been held to be the result of heating by a solar energy source, most likely electrical induction, during the formation of the planetary system. Such variations in thermal history can be more simply explained by the presence of different amounts of the radionuclide aluminum-26, whose decay products are observed in meteorites, in planetesimals. These differences occurred naturally as a function of the increasing amount of time required to accrete objectsfarther from the sun, during which aluminum-26 decayed from its initial concentration in the solar nebula. Both theory and isotopic evidence suggest that increases in accretion time across the asteroid belt are of order several half-lives of aluminum-26, which is sufficient to produce the inferred differences in thermal history.Variations in petrology among meteorites point to a strong heating event early in solar system history, but the heat source has remained unidentified (1, 2). The highenergy, short-lived radionuclide 26A1 (halflife 0.72 million years) has been considered the most likely source since the discovery of its decay product, excess 26Mg, in Allende calcium-aluminum inclusions (CAIs) (3). Furthermore, observation of relic 26Mg in an achondritic clast and in feldspars within ordinary chondrites (4, 5) provided strong evidence for radioactive 26A1 in meteorite' parent bodies and not just in refractory nebular condensates. The inferred amount of 26A1 is consistent with constraints on the thermal evolution of both ordinary (6) and carbonaceous (7, 8) chondrite parent objects up to a few hundred kilometers in diameter. Also present in meteorite parent bodies was 60Fe (9), although its thermal effect was probably much smaller than that of 26A1 (1 0).