Related papers: Cohesive Regolith on Fast Rotating Asteroids
A body dissipates energy when it freely rotates about any axis different from principal. This entails relaxation, i.e., decrease of the rotational energy, with the angular momentum preserved. The spin about the major-inertia axis…
Using viscoelastic mass/spring model simulations, we explore tidal evolution and migration of compact binary asteroid systems. We find that after the secondary is captured into a spin-synchronous state, non-principal axis rotation in the…
All atmosphere-less planetary bodies are covered with a dust layer, the so-called regolith, which determines the optical, mechanical and thermal properties of their surface. These properties depend on the regolith material, the size…
The efficiency of regolith production is key in understanding the properties of airless surfaces. Debris aprons, of fillets, around rocks are an ubiquitous morphology on many surfaces without atmosphere, which origin and evolution are…
The thermal inertia of an asteroid is an indicator of the thermophysical properties of the regolith and is determined by the size of grains on the surface. Previous thermophysical modeling studies of asteroids have identified or suggested…
A planet orbiting in a disk of planetesimals can experience an instability in which it migrates to smaller orbital radii. Resonant interactions between the planet and planetesimals remove angular momentum from the planetesimals, increasing…
A doubly synchronous binary asteroid simultaneously experiences YORP and BYORP, the former being independent of the radius of the orbit, while the latter linearly dependent on the radius. In many systems YORP and BYORP can compensate each…
The majority of white dwarfs that host periodic transiting planetary debris do so at distances that exceed the rubble-pile Roche limit, in disagreement with canonical formation models that focus on the tidal disruption of minor planets.…
Active asteroid (6478) Gault sheds mass independent of location along its orbit. Rotational instability is considered to induce the observed activities. If this is the case, because Gaults breakup event has not been detected, surface…
Tidal dissipation in a celestial body can be used to probe its internal structure. Tides govern the orbital evolution of binary systems and therefore constraints on the interior of binary system members can be derived by knowing the age and…
NASA has developed a "Figure of Merit" method to grade the fidelity of lunar simulants for scientific and engineering purposes. Here we extend the method to grade asteroid simulants, both regolith and cobble variety, and we apply the method…
The long-term dynamical evolution of asteroid families is governed by the interplay between orbital and rotational evolution driven by thermal forces and collision. We aim to observationally trace the rotational evolution of main-belt…
The surface zonal winds observed in the giant planets form a complex jet pattern with alternating prograde and retrograde direction. While the main equatorial band is prograde on the gas giants, both ice giants have a pronounced retrograde…
Some fast radio bursts (FRBs) exhibit repetitive behaviors and their origins remain enigmatic. It has been argued that repeating FRBs could be produced by the interaction between a neutron star and an asteroid belt. Here we consider the…
This study is carried out in the framework of sample-return missions to asteroids that use a low-speed projectile as the primary component of its sampling mechanism (e.g., JAXA's Hayabusa and Hayabusa2 missions). We perform numerical…
Since the Apollo program or earlier it has been widely believed that the lunar regolith was compacted through vibrations including nearby impact events, thermal stress release in the regolith, deep moon quakes, and shallow moon quakes.…
The first direct detection of the asteroidal YORP effect, a phenomenon that changes the spin states of small bodies due to thermal reemission of sunlight from their surfaces, was obtained for (54509) YORP 2000 PH5. Such an alteration can…
Asteroid (99942) Apophis' close approach in 2029 will be one of the most significant small-body encounter events in the near future and offers a good opportunity for in situ exploration to determine the asteroid's surface properties and…
Many features of the outer solar system are replicated in numerical simulations if the giant planets undergo an orbital instability that ejects one or more ice giants. During this instability, Jupiter and Saturn's orbits diverge, crossing…
We investigate the gravity driven rapid failure of a granular step composed of non-cohesive steel beads. The step is initially held together with electromagnets, and released when the current is switched off. We visualize the surface and…