You're right in your hunch that you're missing something. The relationship between Mars impact rates and Earth impact rates is very complex and poorly explored. In part because this is because the maths are incredibly complex, in part because these models are poorly developed, and in large part simply because we simply lack the counts - we have some of the data, but it is unanalyzed.


To just say the relationship between impacts on mars and earth is extremely complex and poorly explored doesn't answer my question. I don't see how spending money counting craters on Mars will do anything for us on Earth. What is the expected Data from these crater counts going to tell us that we don't know already? That a small impactor hits mars every XXX years. Who cares, I don't live on Mars, I live on Earth. Now maybe this money and manpower could be directed at something useful like landing probes on asteroids and then possibly manipulating their orbits.

-Steve G.