Related papers: Combining asteroid models derived by lightcurve in…

The SiTian project, with its vast field of view, will become an ideal platform for asteroid scientific research. In this study, we develop a pipeline to analyze the photometry of asteroids and derive their periods from the data collected by…

Context. Many databases on asteroid brightnesses (e.g. ALCDEF, WISE) are potential sources for extensive asteroid shape and spin modelling. Individual lightcurve inversion models require several apparitions and hundreds of data points per…

Asteroid pairs had a single progenitor that split due to rotational-fission of a weak, rubble-pile structured body. By constructing shape models of asteroid pairs from multiple-apparition observations and using a lightcurve inversion…

Asteroids are frequently colliding with small projectiles. Although each individual small collision is not very important, their cumulative effect can substantially change topography and also the overall shape of an asteroid. We run…

We have developed a theoretical description of how of an asteroid's polarization-phase curve will be affected by the removal of the dust from the surface due to a size-dependent phenomenon such as radiation pressure-driven escape of…

Asteroids can be eclipsed by other bodies in the Solar System, but no direct observation of an asteroid eclipse has been reported to date. We describe a statistical method to predict an eclipse for an asteroid based on the analysis of the…

The amount of sparse asteroid photometry being gathered by both space- and ground-based surveys is growing exponentially. This large volume of data poses a computational challenge owing to both the large amount of information to be…

This paper presents an integrated model-learning predictive control scheme for spacecraft orbit-attitude station-keeping in the vicinity of asteroids. The orbiting probe relies on optical and laser navigation while attitude measurements are…

Many asteroids are rubble piles with irregular shapes. While the irregular shapes of large asteroids may be attributed to collisional events, those of small asteroids may result from not only impact events but also rotationally induced…

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will be a ground-based, optical, all-sky, rapid cadence survey project with tremendous potential for discovering and characterizing asteroids. With LSST's large 6.5m diameter primary mirror, a wide…

We will discuss some specific applications to the rotation state and the shapes of moderately large asteroids, and techniques of observations putting some emphasis on the HST/FGS instrument.

Estimates for asteroid masses are based on their gravitational perturbations on the orbits of other objects such as Mars, spacecraft, or other asteroids and/or their satellites. In the case of asteroid-asteroid perturbations, this leads to…

An occulter is a large diffracting screen which may be flown in conjunction with a telescope to image extrasolar planets. The edge is shaped to minimize the diffracted light in a region beyond the occulter, and a telescope may be placed in…

With the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE; Wright et al. 2010), we have observed over 157,000 minor planets (Mainzer et al. 2011). Included in these are a number of near-Earth objects, Main Belt Asteroids, and irregular satellites…

Thanks to the Gaia mission, it will be possible to determine the masses of approximately hundreds of large main belt asteroids with very good precision. We currently have diameter estimates for all of them that can be used to compute their…

We present a comparison of our results from ground-based observations of asteroid (21) Lutetia with imaging data acquired during the flyby of the asteroid by the ESA Rosetta mission. This flyby provided a unique opportunity to evaluate and…

In the absence of dense photometry for a large population of Near Earth Objects (NEOs), the best method of obtaining a shape distribution comes from sparse photometry and partial lightcurves. We have used 867 partial lightcurves obtained by…

Automated sky surveys frequently report sparse-in-time multiband photometric observations of asteroids passing through their fields of view. Photometric data are currently available for tens of thousands of asteroids, and new data…

Families of asteroids generated by the collisional fragmentation of a common parent body have been identified using clustering methods of asteroids in their proper orbital element space. An alternative method has been developed in order to…

Through multiple, small unmanned probes we can more efficiently capture an asteroid and return it to lunar orbit. The Asteroid Return and Exploration System (ARES) aims to make use of previously tested technology with the application of a…