Related papers: Meteoroid impacts onto asteroids: a competitor for…
Meteorites are a remarkable resource. They capture the imagination of people worldwide with their spectacular entry through Earth's atmosphere as fireballs, and their exotic character of being pieces of other worlds. Scientifically, they…
NEOs come close to the Earth's orbit so that any dust ejected from them, might be seen as a meteor shower. Orbits evolve rapidly, so that a similarity of orbits at one given time is not suffcient to prove a relationship, orbital evolution…
Despite their very low surface gravities, the surfaces of asteroids and comets are covered by granular materials - regolith - that can range from a fine dust to a gravel-like structure of varying depths. Understanding the dynamics of…
Impacts from icy and rocky bodies have helped shape the composition of solar system objects, for example the Earth-Moon system, or the recent impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter. It is likely that such impacts also shape the…
Every second millions of small meteoroids enter the Earth's atmosphere producing dense plasmas. Radars easily detect these plasmas and researchers use this data to characterize both the meteoroids and the atmosphere. This paper develops a…
We study the motion of test particles in the metric of a localized and slowly rotating astronomical source, within the framework of linear gravitoelectromagnetism, grounded on a Post-Minkowskian approximation of general relativity. Special…
We present the analysis and computational results for the inclination relative effect of moonlets of triple asteroidal systems. Perturbations on moonlets due to the primarys non-sphericity gravity, the solar gravity, and moonlets relative…
[abridged] In the typical giant-impact scenario for the Moon formation most of the Moon's material originates from the impactor. Any Earth-impactor composition difference should, therefore, correspond to a comparable Earth-Moon composition…
Small bodies in the solar system are conventionally classified into asteroids and comets. However, it is recently found that a small number of objects can exhibit properties of both asteroids and comets. Some are more consistent with…
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…
The asteroids are the major source of potential impactors on the Earth today. It has long been assumed that the giant planet Jupiter acts as a shield, significantly lowering the impact rate on the Earth from both cometary and asteroidal…
A meteoroid penetrating the Earth's atmosphere leaves behind a trail of dense plasma in the E-region ionosphere, a region where electrons are strongly magnetized while ions are demagnetized due to their frequent collisions with neutrals.…
At present, approximately 1500 asteroids are known to evolve inside or sticked to the exterior 1:2 resonance with Mars at a = 2.418 AU, being (142) Polana the largest member of this group. The effect of the forced secular modes superposed…
To deflect impact-trajectory of massive km^3 and spinning asteroid by a few terrestrial radius one need a large momentum exchange. The dragging of huge spinning bodies in space by external engine seems difficult or impossible. Our solution…
We consider how an impact generated seismic pulse affects the surface of an asteroid distant from the impact site. With laboratory experiments on dry polydisperse gravel mixtures, we track the trajectories of particles ejected from the…
We investigate the electromagnetic interaction of a relativistic stellar wind with small bodies in orbit around the star. Based on our work on the theory of Alfv\'en wings to relativistic winds presented in a companion paper, we estimate…
The magnetic field of a host star can impact the orbit of a stellar partner, planet, or asteroid if the orbiting body is itself magnetic or electrically conducting. Here, we focus on the instantaneous magnetic forces on an orbiting body in…
Photometric observations of asteroids show that some of them are in non-principal axis rotation state (free precession), called tumbling. Collisions between asteroids have been proposed as a possible asteroid rotation excitation mechanism.…
We consider the impact of electromagnetic induction and Ohmic heating on a conducting planetary object that orbits a magnetic star. Power dissipated as heat saps orbital energy. If this heat is trapped by an insulating crust or mantle,…
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…