Related papers: Space weathering of asteroids
Surface shedding of an asteroid is a failure mode where surface materials fly off due to strong centrifugal forces beyond the critical spin period, while the internal structure does not deform significantly. This paper proposes a possible…
We examined two decades of SpeX/NASA Infrared Telescope Facility observations from the Small Main-Belt Asteroid Spectroscopic Survey (SMASS) and the MIT-Hawaii Near-Earth Object Spectroscopic Survey (MITHNEOS) to investigate uncertainties…
Many small boulders with reflectance values higher than 1.5 times the average reflectance have been found on the near-Earth asteroid 162173 Ryugu. Based on their visible wavelength spectral differences, Tatsumi et al. (2021) defined two…
Conventional meteoroid theory assumes that the dominant mode of ablation is by evaporation following intense heating during atmospheric flight. In this paper we consider the question of whether sputtering may provide an alternative…
Phase curves of asteroids are typically considered to depend solely on the scattering properties of airless particulate surfaces and the size of the object being studied. In this study, we demonstrate the additional dependence of phase…
We present here the discovery of a new class of super-slow rotating asteroids (P>1000 hours) in data extracted from the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) and Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) all-sky surveys. Of the 39…
We investigated the population of asteroids in comet-like orbits using available asteroid size and albedo catalogs of data taken with the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, AKARI, and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer on the basis of…
We present evidence, via a large survey of 191 new spectra along with previously-published spectra, of a divide in the 3-$\mu$m spectral properties of the low-albedo asteroid population. One group ("Sharp-types" or ST, with band centers $<$…
Previous observations suggested that Ceres has active but possibly sporadic water outgassing, and possibly varying spectral characteristics in a time scale of months. We used all available data of Ceres collected in the past three decades…
Granular material that is bound by the low gravity of a small asteroid is mobilized by slow velocity impacts. These splashes generated by impacts might play an important role in sculpting the asteroid's surface. In laboratory experiments we…
We studied impact processes by means of smoothed-particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations. The method was applied to modeling formation of main-belt families during the cometary bombardment (either early or late, ${\sim}\,3.85\,{\rm Gy}$…
Most asteroids with a diameter larger than $\sim 300 \ {\rm m}$ are rubble piles i.e. consisting of more than one solid object. All asteroids are rotating but almost all asteroids larger than $\sim 300 \ {\rm m}$ rotate with a period longer…
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…
Many asteroids show indications they have undergone impacts with meteoroid particles having radii between 0.01 m and 1 m. During such impacts, small dust grains will be ejected at the impact site. The possibility of these dust grains (with…
The spectral evolution of asteroid surfaces reflects the competition between space weathering and impact resurfacing. While previous studies focused primarily on age-dating, the role of family population size remains largely unexplored. We…
Using a fully autonomous spacecraft - Bering - we propose to detect and study sub-km asteroids from an orbit within the asteroid Main Belt. The main purpose of the proposed Bering mission is to detect a statistically significant sample of…
Asteroid families, traditionally defined as clusters of objects in orbital parameter space, often have distinctive optical colors. We show that the separation of family members from background interlopers can be improved with the aid of…
Many asteroids that make close encounters with terrestrial planets are in a binary configuration. Here we calculate the relevant encounter timescales and investigate the effects of encounters on a binary's mutual orbit. We use a combination…
Polluted white dwarfs are generally accreting terrestrial-like material that may originate from a debris belt like the asteroid belt in the solar system. The fraction of white dwarfs that are polluted drops off significantly for white…
To evaluate the feasibility of measuring differences in bulk composition among carbonaceous meteorite parent bodies from an asteroid or comet orbiter, we present the results of a performance simulation of an orbital gamma-ray spectroscopy…