Related papers: Rotationally induced failure of irregularly shaped…
During close approaches to planets or stars, the morphological and dynamical properties of rubble-pile small bodies can be modified, and some may catastrophically break up. This phenomenon is of particular interest for understanding the…
The apparent magnitude of elongated small bodies is time-dependent over their rotation phase. Therefore, previously undiscovered aspherical minor planets may experience a shape-driven selection effect in systematic surveys versus their…
Satellites around large asteroids are preferentially found among those with the most rapid rotation and elongated shape. The taxonomic statistics are similarly skewed; in total, 13 asteroids larger than 100 km are known to have satellites,…
Rotational dynamics of asteroids carry important information about their internal structure, collisional history and material composition. This work investigates whether M-type asteroids exhibit systematically higher rotation rates than the…
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…
An asteroid pair consists of two unbound objects with almost identical heliocentric orbital elements that were formed when a single "rubble pile" asteroid failed to remain bound against an increasing rotation rate. Models suggest that the…
We investigate the qualitative characteristics of a test particle attracted to an irregular elongated body, modeled as a non-homogeneous straight segment with a variable linear density. By deriving the potential function in closed form, we…
The implication of small amounts of cohesion within relatively small rubble pile asteroids is investigated with regard to their evolution under the persistent presence of the YORP effect. We find that below a characteristic size, which is a…
In 2029, the near-Earth asteroid (99942) Apophis approaches the Earth within six Earth radii. This opportunity is one of the rarest natural experiments that we can use to better characterize a small body through telescopic observations and…
Most asteroids with a diameter larger than $\sim 300 \ {\rm m}$ are rubble piles i.e. consisting of more than one solid object. All asteroids are rotating but almost all asteroids larger than $\sim 300 \ {\rm m}$ rotate with a period longer…
Proximity observations by OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa2 provided clues on the shape evolution processes of the target asteroids, (101955) Bennu and (162173) Ryugu. Their oblate shapes with equatorial ridges, or the so-called top shapes, may have…
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…
Tumbling asteroids belong to a small group of objects, whose angular velocity vector is unaligned with any of its principal axes of inertia. This leads to challenging efforts to model the trajectory of any spacecraft designed to orbit these…
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…
The subject of this work is the physical characterization of asteroids, focusing on the thermal inertia of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs). Thermal inertia governs the Yarkovsky effect, a non-gravitational force which significantly alters the…
Asteroid modeling efforts in the last decade resulted in a comprehensive dataset of almost 400 convex shape models and their rotation states. This amount already provided a deep insight into physical properties of main-belt asteroids or…
The rotational-fission of a rubble-pile asteroid can result in an "asteroid pair", two un-bound asteroids sharing similar orbits. This mechanism might exposes material that previously had never have been exposed to the weathering conditions…
Asteroids have called the attention of researchers around the world. Its chemical and physical composition can give us important information about the formation of our Solar System. In addition, the hypothesis of mining some of these…
The cumulative effects of weak resonant and secular perturbations by the major planets produce chaotic behavior of asteroids on long timescales. Dynamical chaos is the dominant loss mechanism for asteroids with diameters D > 10 km in the…
Recent space missions have provided substantial evidence of regolith movement on the surfaces of near Earth asteroids. To investigate this phenomenon, we present a continuum-based model that describes regolith motion on nearly spherical…