Related papers: Asteroid 4 Vesta: dynamical and collisional evolut…
This work explores the implications of the Jovian Early Bombardment (JEB) for the evolution of the primordial Vesta, in particular in terms of crater saturation, crustal excavation and surface erosion. Both scenarios assuming the…
The Dawn mission confirms predictions that the asteroid 4 Vesta is differentiated with an iron-rich core, a silicate mantle and a basaltic crust, and confirms Vesta as the parent body of the HED meteorites. To better understand its early…
V-type asteroids are a taxonomic class whose surface is associated to a basaltic composition. The only known source of V-type asteroids in the Main Asteroid Belt is (4) Vesta, that is located in the inner part of the belt. However, many…
Observations of asteroid 4 Vesta by NASA's Dawn spacecraft are interesting because its surface has the largest range of albedo, color and composition of any other asteroid visited by spacecraft to date. These hemispherical and rotational…
For decades the limited thickness of Vesta's basaltic crust, revealed by the link between the asteroid and the howardite-eucrite-diogenite family of meteorites, and its survival to collisional erosion offered an important constraint for the…
Basaltic V-type asteroids are leftovers from the formation and evolution of differentiated planetesimals. They are thought to originate from mantles and crusts of multiple different parent bodies. Identifying the links between individual…
The NASA Dawn mission has extensively examined the surface of asteroid Vesta, the second most massive body in the main belt. The high quality of the gathered data provides us with an unique opportunity to determine the surface and internal…
Context. Over the past decades, several interplanetary missions have studied small bodies in situ, leading to major advances in our understanding of their geological and geophysical properties. These missions, however, have had a limited…
The surface composition of Vesta, the most massive intact basaltic object in the asteroid belt, is interesting because it provides us with an insight into magmatic differentiation of planetesimals that eventually coalesced to form the…
A bombardment of comets is thought to have occurred in the inner solar system as a result of a dynamical instability among the giant planets after gas disk dispersal. Vesta, the second largest asteroid in the main asteroid belt, likely…
Vesta has a complex cratering history, with ancient terrains as well as recent large impacts that have led to regional resurfacing. Crater counts can help constrain the relative ages of different units on Vesta's surface, but converting…
Dawn spacecraft orbited Vesta for more than one year and collected a huge volume of multispectral, high-resolution data in the visible wavelengths with the Framing Camera. We present a detailed disk-integrated and disk-resolved photometric…
The survival of asteroid Vesta during the violent early history of the Solar System is a pivotal constraint on theories of planetary formation. Particularly important from this perspective is the amount of olivine excavated from the vestan…
The majority of basaltic asteroids are found in the inner main belt, although a few have also been observed in the outer main belt and near-Earth space. These asteroids -referred to as V-types- have surface compositions that resemble that…
V-type asteroids in the inner Main Belt (a < 2.5 AU) and the HED meteorites are thought to be genetically related to one another as collisional fragments from the surface of the large basaltic asteroid 4 Vesta. We investigate this…
In this work we study the link between the evolution of the internal structure of Vesta and thermal heating due to 26Al and 60Fe and long-lived radionuclides, taking into account the chemical differentiation of the body and the affinity of…
Despite its small size, the asteroid 4 Vesta has been completely differentiated to core and mantle. Its composition is similar to howardite--eucrite--diogenite (HED) meteorites of which the detailed petrology is known. Therefore, Vesta is a…
The majority of basaltic objects in the main belt are dynamically connected to Vesta, the largest differentiated asteroid known. Others, due to their current orbital parameters, cannot be easily dynamically linked to Vesta. This is…
Among the largest objects in the main belt, asteroid 4 Vesta is unique in showing a basaltic crust. It is also the biggest member of the Vesta family, which is supposed to originate from a large cratering event about 1 Gyr ago (Marzari et…
Vesta, the second largest Main Belt asteroid, will be the first to be explored in 2011 by NASA's Dawn mission. It is a dry, likely differentiated body with spectrum suggesting that is has been resurfaced by basaltic lava flows, not too…