Related papers: Asteroid rotation excitation by subcatastrophic im…
Our investigation is motivated by the recent discovery of asteroids orbiting the Sun and simultaneously staying near one of the Solar System planets for a long time. This regime of motion is usually called the quasi-satellite regime, since…
A method for asteroid deflection that makes use of a spacecraft moving back and forth on a segment of an appropriate Keplerian orbit about the asteroid is described and evaluated. It is shown that, on average, the spacecraft describing such…
While of order a million asteroids have been discovered, the number in rigorously controlled samples that have precise orbits and rotation periods, as well as well-measured colors, is relatively small. In particular, less than a dozen…
The main asteroid belt (MB) is low in mass but dynamically excited. Here we propose a new mechanism to excite the MB during the giant planet ('Nice model') instability, which is expected to have featured repeated close encounters between…
Young asteroid families are unique sources of information about fragmentation physics and the structure of their parent bodies, since their physical properties have not changed much since their birth. Families have different properties such…
Knowledge of the surface thermal inertia of an asteroid can provide insight into surface structure: porous material has a lower thermal inertia than rock. We develop a means to estimate thermal inertia values of asteroids and use it to show…
Context. Rotational instability of rubble-pile asteroids can trigger mass shedding, forming transient debris clouds that may provide the initial conditions for secondary formation in binary systems. Aims. We investigate the dynamical and…
We report extensive theoretical calculations on the rotation-inversion excitation of interstellar ammonia (NH3) due to collisions with atomic and molecular hydrogen (both para- and ortho-H2). Close-coupling calculations are performed for…
Using viscoelastic mass/spring model simulations, we explore tidal evolution and migration of compact binary asteroid systems. We find that after the secondary is captured into a spin-synchronous state, non-principal axis rotation in the…
Processes such as the solar wind sputtering and micrometeorite impacts can modify optical properties of surfaces of airless bodies. This explains why spectra of the main belt asteroids, exposed to these `space weathering' processes over…
From the results of a comprehensive asteroid population evolution model, we conclude that the YORP-induced rotational fission hypothesis can be consistent with the observed population statistics of small asteroids in the main belt including…
A set of 50,000 artificial Earth impacting asteroids was used to obtain, for the first time, information about the dominance of individual impact effects such as wind blast, overpressure shock, thermal radiation, cratering, seismic shaking,…
Observational constraints on planet spin-axis has recently become possible, and revealed a system that favors a large spin-axis misalignment, a low stellar spin-orbit misalignment and a high eccentricity. To explain the origin of such…
In the standard formation models of terrestrial planets in the solar system and close-in super-Earths in non-resonant orbits recently discovered by exoplanet observations, planets are formed by giant impacts of protoplanets or planetary…
We use numerical $N$-body experiments to explore the statistics of multiple systems formed in small-$N$ subclusters, i.e. the distributions of orbital semi-major axis, $a$, orbital eccentricity, $e$, mass ratio, $q$, mutual orbital…
We study the transition rates of an atom rotating in a circular orbit, which is coupled with fluctuating electromagnetic fields in vacuum. We find that when the rotational angular velocity exceeds the transition frequency of the atom, the…
We investigate analytically and numerically the orbits of spinning particles around black holes in the post Newtonian limit and in the presence of cosmic expansion. We show that orbits that are circular in the absence of spin, get deformed…
We present a framework to study regolith segregation on rubble-pile asteroids (self-gravitating granular aggregates) due to seismic shaking induced by impacts sustained during their lifetimes. We first relate the amplitude and frequency of…
Small high-speed impact craters formed in rocks, ice, and other brittle materials consist of an outer, broad shallow concentric region formed by tensile fracture (spall), surrounding a smaller central "pit" crater of greater depth. On the…
The rubble pile spin barrier is an upper limit on the rotation rate of asteroids larger than ~200-300 m. Among thousands of asteroids with diameters larger than ~300 m, only a handful of asteroids are known to rotate faster than 2.0 h, all…