It probably wound have left a nifty crater for us to look at, but it may not have ejected much garbage into the solar system because the gravitational field of Jupiter is so strong that little of the ejecta would have escaped. The atmosphere can 'heal' itself, but its surface would not have. But the result would have been a minor blemish. Jupiter is a BIG planet folks.
Fragment A struck Jupiter with its kinetic energy equivalent to about 225,000 megatons of TNT creating plume which rose about 1000 km above the Jovian cloudtops. Fragment B was about the same brightness as fragment A in the pre-impact images but its impact left a small mark on Jupiter that was observed by only a few observatories. Then fragments C, D, and E left marks similar the impact of fragment A while the impact of F was difficult to detect. The real show-stopper was fragment G which struck Jupiter with an estimated energy equivalent to 6,000,000 megatons of TNT (about 600 times the estimated arsenal of the world). The fireball from fragment G rose about 3000 km above the Jovian cloudtops and was observed by many observatories (mostly in infrared). As it turned out, visible-light-radiating fireballs were seen with large telescopes and many observers reported seeing the dark impact scars with telescopes as small as 5 cm in diameter.
For more information, visit the SL9 Pages at the NASA JPL website.
Copyright 1997 Dr. Sten Odenwald
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