Related papers: Model for Asteroid Regolith to Guide Simulant Deve…
It is common practice nowadays to derive spins and 3D shapes of asteroids from the inversion of photometric light curves. However, this method requires a good number of photometric points and dedicated observing sessions. On the other hand,…
Aims. Observations of solar protons near comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P) by the Rosetta spacecraft can be modelled by the planar motion in an effective magnetic field proportional to 1/r^2. We aim to provide a thorough study of such…
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…
We present a novel implementation of a soft sphere, discrete elements code to simulate the dynamics of self-gravitating granular materials. The code is used to study the outcome of sub-sonic collisions between self-gravitating rubble piles…
Asteroid-neutron star collision models have been proposed as possible sources of high-energy transients, such as gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and fast radio bursts (FRBs). The sequence of events following the impact of the asteroid and finally…
Debris disks are the natural by-products of the planet formation process. Scattered or polarized light observations are mostly sensitive to small dust grains that are released from the grinding down of bigger planetesimals. High angular…
The first interstellar object 'Oumuamua is discovered in 2017. When 'Oumuamua travels in interstellar space, it keeps colliding with interstellar medium (ISM). Given a sufficiently long interaction time, its rotation state may change…
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…
The under-abundance of asteroids on orbits with small perihelion distances suggests that thermally-driven disruption may be an important process in the removal of rocky bodies in the Solar System. Here we report our study of how the debris…
Despite the large amount of high quality data generated in recent space encounters with asteroids, the majority of our knowledge about these objects comes from ground based observations. Asteroids travelling in orbits that are potentially…
Thermal infrared emission and thermophysical modeling techniques are powerful tools in deciphering the surface properties of asteroids. The near-Earth asteroid (3200) Phaethon is an active asteroid with a very small perihelion distance and…
The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft arrived at its target, near-Earth asteroid 101955 Bennu, in December 2018. After one year of operating in proximity, the…
Modeling the interior of a planet is difficult because the small number of measured parameters is insufficient to constrain the many variables involved in describing the interior structure and composition. One solution is to invoke…
We show that a number of claims made in Myhrvold (2018) (hereafter M2018b) regarding the WISE data and thermal modeling of asteroids are incorrect. That paper provides thermal fit parameter outputs for only two of the about 150,000 object…
Between 2010 and 2017 we have collected new optical and radar observations of the potentially hazardous asteroid (2102)~Tantalus from the ESO NTT and Danish telescopes at the La Silla Observatory and from the Arecibo planetary radar. The…
Airless planetary bodies are covered by a dusty layer called regolith. The grain size of the regolith determines the temperature and the mechanical strength of the surface layers. Thus, knowledge of the grain size of planetary regolith…
We investigated the reliability of the genetic algorithm which will be used to invert the photometric measurements of asteroids collected by the European Space Agency Gaia mission. To do that, we performed several sets of simulations for 10…
We use numerical simulations to measure the sensitivity of the tidal spin down rate of a homogeneous triaxial ellipsoid to its axis ratios by comparing the drift rate in orbital semi-major axis to that of a spherical body with the same…
Impacts play a fundamental role in shaping the physical and chemical properties of the objects in our Solar System. Given the challenges in replicating such collisions through laboratory experiments, computer simulations are an important…
Surfaces of planets and small bodies of our Solar System are often covered by a layer of granular material that can range from a fine regolith to a gravel-like structure of varying depths. Therefore, the dynamics of granular materials are…