Related papers: Small Solar System Bodies as granular media
The recent explosive growth of small satellite operations driven primarily from an academic or pedagogical need, has demonstrated the viability of commercial-off-the-shelf technologies in space. They have also leveraged and shown the need…
The recent discovery of narrow rings around minor bodies has raised many questions regarding their origin and current dynamics. Sharp ring boundaries seem indicative of shepherding moonlets, but none have been found. All rings lie close to…
The study of planets beyond the solar system and the search for other habitable planets and life is just beginning. Ground-based (radial velocity and transits) and space-based surveys (transits and astrometry) will identify planets spanning…
The late stages of stellar evolution from asymptotic giant branch stars to planetary nebulae are now known to be an active phase of molecular synthesis. Over 80 gas-phase molecules have been detected through rotational transitions in the…
Meteorites, which are remnants of solar system formation, provide a direct glimpse into the dynamics and evolution of a young stellar object (YSO), namely our Sun. Much of our knowledge about the astrophysical context of the birth of the…
Small bodies in the solar system are conventionally classified into asteroids and comets. However, it is recently found that a small number of objects can exhibit properties of both asteroids and comets. Some are more consistent with…
The inner Solar System contains a cloud of small (1-100 micron) dust grains created when small bodies-asteroids, comets, and Kuiper belt objects-collide and outgas. This dust cloud, the zodiacal cloud probably has extrasolar analogs,…
Extensive photometric stellar surveys show that many main sequence stars show emission at infrared and longer wavelengths that is in excess of the stellar photosphere; this emission is thought to arise from circumstellar dust. The presence…
The last several years have brought about a dynamic shift in the view of exoplanetary systems in the post-main sequence, perhaps epitomized by the evidence for surviving rocky planetary bodies at white dwarfs. Coinciding with the launch of…
The science and origins of asteroids is deemed high priority in the Planetary Science Decadal Survey. Two of the main questions from the Decadal Survey pertain to what the "initial stages, conditions, and processes of solar system formation…
Thousands of confirmed and candidate exoplanets have been identified in recent years. Consequently, theoretical research on the formation and dynamical evolution of planetary systems has seen a boost, and the processes of planet-planet…
The study of the last stages of planet formation, also known as debris disks, is fundamental to place constrains on the formation of planetary sized bodies. Debris disks are composed of dust and occasionally small amounts of gas, both…
Planetary systems that orbit white dwarf stars can be studied via spectroscopic observations of the stars themselves. Numerous white dwarfs are seen to have accreted mostly rocky minor planets, the remnants of which are present in the…
Batygin and Brown (2016) have suggested the existence of a new Solar System planet supposed to be responsible for the perturbation of eccentric orbits of small outer bodies. The main challenge is now to detect and characterize this putative…
Astrometric issues for solar system studies are discussed. An overview gives references and cover all aspects of the solar system where astrometry is important: orbits of planets, moons, asteroids and NEOs, masses of asteroids, occultations…
The stars that populate the solar neighbourhood were formed in stellar clusters. Through N-body simulations of these clusters, we measure the rate of close encounters between stars. By monitoring the interaction histories of each star, we…
Exoplanets are organized in a broad array of orbital configurations that reflect their formation along with billions of years of dynamical processing through gravitational interactions. This history is encoded in the angular momentum…
We present a series of numerical simulations using a shock physics smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) code, investigating energetic impacts on small celestial bodies characterised by diverse internal structures, ranging from weak and…
Observational surveys for extrasolar planets probe the diverse outcomes of planet formation and evolution. These surveys measure the frequency of planets with different masses, sizes, orbital characteristics, and host star properties. Small…
Understanding the physics of small bodies such as asteroids, comets, and planetary moons will help us understand the formation of the solar system, and also provide us with resources for a future space economy. Due to these reasons,…