Related papers: Scattering V-type asteroids during the giant plane…
The distribution of asteroids across the Main Belt has been studied for decades to understand the compositional distribution and what that tells us about the formation and evolution of our solar system. All-sky surveys now provide orders of…
It is generally accepted today that our solar system has undergone a phase during which the orbits of the giant planets became very unstable. In recent years, many studies have identified traces of this event and have provided reasonable…
The dynamical architecture and compositional diversity of the asteroid belt strongly constrain planet formation models. Recent Solar System formation models have shown that the asteroid belt may have been born empty and later filled with…
Gas giant planets have been detected on eccentric orbits several hundreds of astronomical units in size around other stars. It has been proposed that even the Sun hosts a wide-orbit planet of 5-10 Earth masses, often called Planet Nine,…
In this work we aim to constrain the slope of the size distribution of main-belt asteroids, at their primordial state. To do so we turn out attention to the part of the main asteroid belt between 2.82 and 2.96~AU, the so-called "pristine…
Asteroids formed in a dynamically quiescent disk but their orbits became gravitationally stirred enough by Jupiter to lead to high-speed collisions. As a result, many dozen large asteroids have been disrupted by impacts over the age of 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…
Investigations of the main asteroid belt and efforts to constrain that population's physical characteristics involve the daunting task of studying hundreds of thousands of small bodies. Taxonomic systems are routinely employed to study the…
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…
To examine the distribution of rotational rates for chips of asteroid 4 Vesta, lightcurve observation of seven V-type asteroids (2511 Patterson, 2640 Hallstorm, 2653 Principia, 2795 Lapage, 3307 Athabasca, 4147 Lennon, and 4977 Rauthgundis)…
The dynamical structure of the Solar System can be explained by a period of orbital instability experienced by the giant planets. While a late instability was originally proposed to explain the Late Heavy Bombardment, recent work favors an…
Containing only a few percent the mass of the moon, the current asteroid belt is around three to four orders of magnitude smaller that its primordial mass inferred from disk models. Yet dynamical studies have shown that the asteroid belt…
Asteroid families form as a result of large-scale collisions among main belt asteroids. The orbital distribution of fragments after a family-forming impact could inform us about their ejection velocities. Unfortunately, however, orbits…
Through its connection with HED meteorites, Vesta is known as one of the first bodies to have accreted and differentiated in the Solar Nebula, predating the formation of Jupiter and surviving the violent evolution of the early Solar System.…
The asteroid belt was dynamically shaped during and after planet formation. Despite representing a broad ring of stable orbits, the belt contains less than one one-thousandth of an Earth mass. The asteroid orbits are dynamically excited…
Most main-belt asteroids are primitive rock and metal bodies in orbit about the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. Disruption, through high velocity collisions or rotational spin-up, is believed to be the primary mechanism for the production and…
We demonstrate dynamical pathways from main-belt asteroid and Centaur orbits to those in co-orbital motion with Jupiter, including the retrograde (inclination $i>90^o$) state. We estimate that at any given time, there should be $\sim1$…
We have evaluated the rate at which the asteroid belt is losing material, and how it splits between macroscopic bodies and meteoritic dust. The mass loss process is due to the injection of asteroid fragments into unstable dynamical regions,…
Collisions are one of the key processes shaping planetary systems. Asteroid families are outcomes of such collisions still identifiable across our solar system. The families provide a unique view of catastrophic disruption phenomena and…
There are only a few known main belt (MB) asteroid families with ages greater than 2 Gyr (Bro\v{z} et al. 2013, Spoto et al. 2015). Estimates based on the family producing collision rate suggest that the lack of >2 Gyr-old families may be…