Related papers: Rotationally induced failure of irregularly shaped…
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…
More than a half of asteroids in the main belt have irregular shapes with the ratios of the minor to major axis lengths less than 0.6. One of the mechanisms to create such shapes is collisions between asteroids. The relationship between…
Asteroids are leftover pieces from the era of planet formation that help us understand conditions in the early Solar System. Unlike larger planetary bodies that were subject to global thermal modification during and subsequent to their…
The overall shape, internal structure and surface morphology of small bodies such as asteroids and comets are determined to a large degree by the last global-scale impact or disruption event. Depending on the specific energy, impacts lead…
The rotational distribution of asteroids as a function of their size is used {as a diagnostic of} their physical properties and evolution. Recent photometric surveys from the Gaia mission, allowing observation of asteroids with long spin…
Our knowledge of the strengths of small bodies in the Solar System is limited by our poor understanding of their internal structures, and this, in turn, clouds our understanding of the formation and evolution of these bodies. Observations…
We aim to understand how landslides affect the shape and rotational motion of small rubble planetary bodies. We limit ourselves to axisymmetric global landslides, and take the primordial shape of the body to also be axisymmetric. The…
The members of asteroid families have various shapes. We investigate the origin of their shapes by high-resolution impact simulations for catastrophic disruptions using a Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics code. Collisional remnants produced…
This paper presents transition of the failure mode of a cohesive, spherical body due to YORP spin-up. On the assumption that the distribution of materials in the body is homogeneous, failed regions first appearing in the body at different…
Asteroid pairs had a single progenitor that split due to rotational-fission of a weak, rubble-pile structured body. By constructing shape models of asteroid pairs from multiple-apparition observations and using a lightcurve inversion…
Solar system small bodies come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, which are achieved following very individual evolutional paths through billions of years. This paper focuses on the reshaping process of rubble-pile asteroids driven by…
Understanding the dynamical evolution of asteroids through the secular Yarkovsky effect requires the determination of many physical properties, including the rotation period. We propose a method aimed at obtaining a robust determination of…
Results from the TESS mission showed that previous studies strngly underestimated the number of slow rotators, revealing the importance of studying those asteroids. For most slowly rotating asteroids (P > 12), no spin and shape model is…
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.…
Asteroid Ryugu and asteroid Bennu, which were recently visited by spacecraft Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx, respectively, are spinning top-shaped rubble piles. Other axisymmetric top-shaped near-Earth asteroids have been observed with…
Context. Earlier work suggests that slowly rotating asteroids should have higher thermal inertias than faster rotators because the heat wave penetrates deeper into the sub-surface. However, thermal inertias have been determined mainly for…
Most major planetary bodies in the solar system rotate in the same direction as their orbital motion: their spin is prograde. Theoretical studies to explain the direction as well as the magnitude of the spin vector have had mixed success.…
Knowledge of the interior density distribution of an asteroid can reveal its composition and constrain its evolutionary history. However, most asteroid observational techniques are not sensitive to interior properties. We investigate the…
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…
Until recently, most asteroids were thought to be solid bodies whose shapes were determined largely by collisions with other asteroids. It now seems that many asteroids are little more than rubble piles, held together by self-gravity; this…