Related papers: The Global Surface Roughness of 25143 Itokawa

The Yarkovsky (orbital drift) and YORP (spin state change) effects play important roles in the dynamical and physical evolution of asteroids. Thermophysical modelling of these observed effects, and of thermal-infrared observations, allows a…

This study conducts a quantitative distinguishability analysis using quasi-monostatic experimental radar data to find a topographic and backpropagated tomographic reconstruction for an analogue of asteroid Itokawa (25143). In particular, we…

Near-Earth small-body mission targets 162173 Ryugu, 101955 Bennu, and 25143 Itokawa produce gravity fields around 4 orders of magnitude below that of Earth and their irregular shapes, combined with rotational effects produce varying surface…

Understanding the geological modification processes on asteroids can provide information concerning their surface history. Images of small asteroids from spacecraft show a depletion in terms of smaller craters. Seismic shaking was…

Morphological mapping is a fundamental step in studying the processes that shaped an asteroid surface. Yet, it is challenging and often requires multiple independent assessments by trained experts. Here, we present fast methods to detect…

The distributions of size and chemical composition in the regolith on airless bodies provides clues to the evolution of the solar system. Recently, the regolith on asteroid (25143) Itokawa, visited by the JAXA Hayabusa spacecraft, was…

The Hayabusa2 mission impact experiment on asteroid Ryugu created an unexpectedly large crater. The associated regime of low-gravity, low-strength cratering remained largely unexplored so far, because these impact conditions cannot be…

Radiation recoil (YORP) torques are shown to be extremely sensitive to small-scale surface topography. Starting from simulated objects representative of the near-Earth object population, random realizations of three types of small-scale…

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…

We present a new method for the determination of the surface properties of airless bodies from measurements of the emitted infrared flux. Our approach uses machine learning techniques to train, validate, and test a neural network…

The thermal inertia of an asteroid's surface can provide insight into regolith properties, such as the presence of a layer of fine dust, the density and thermal conductivity of a rocky surface, and, together with other observational data,…

Deflection missions to near-Earth asteroids will encounter non-negligible uncertainties in the physical and orbital parameters of the target object. In order to reliably assess future impact threat mitigation operations such uncertainties…

Asteroid 162173 Ryugu is a rubble-pile asteroid, whose top-shape is compatible with models of deformation by spin up. Rims of major craters on Ryugu have an east-west asymmetric profile; their western crater rims are sharp and tall, while…

Boulders are ubiquitously found on the surfaces of small rocky bodies in the inner solar system and their spatial and size distributions give insight into the geological evolution and collisional history of the parent bodies. Using images…

On September 26, 2022, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission successfully impacted Dimorphos, the natural satellite of the binary near-Earth asteroid (65803) Didymos. Numerical simulations of the impact provide a means to…

The tangential YORP effect is a radiation pressure torque produced by asymmetric thermal emission by structures on the asteroid surface. As such structures, previous works considered boulders of different shapes lying on the surface of the…

162173 Ryugu, the target of Hayabusa2, has a round shape with an equatorial ridge, which is known as a spinning top-shape. A strong centrifugal force is a likely contributor to Ryugu's top-shaped features. Observations by Optical Navigation…

The Yarkovsky-O'Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack (YORP) effect plays an important role in the rotational properties and evolution of asteroids. While the YORP effect induced by the macroscopic shape of the asteroid and by the presence of surface…

The near-Earth asteroid (99942) Apophis is a potentially hazardous asteroid. We obtained far-infrared observations of this asteroid with the Herschel Space Observatory's PACS instrument at 70, 100, and 160 micron. These were taken at two…

Surface roughness is a key factor when it comes to friction and wear, as well as to other physical properties. These phenomena are controlled by mechanisms acting at small scales, in which the topography of apparently-flat surfaces is…