Related papers: Painting Asteroids for Planetary Defense
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…
The radiative and particulate loss of mass by the Sun, -9.13*10^-14 Solar masses per year or more causes the orbits of the planets to expand at the same rate, and their periods to lengthen at twice this rate. Unfortunately, under the…
This article discusses how re-emission of absorbed solar light by centimeter- to decimeter-sized structures on the surface of an asteroid can create a component of the recoil force parallel to the surface. Under certain conditions the west…
Given a primary interest in "mitigation of the potential hazard" of near-Earth objects impacting the Earth, the subject of characterization takes on an aspect not normally present when considering asteroids as abstract bodies. Many…
The field of asteroid thermophysical modeling has experienced an extraordinary growth in the last ten years, as new thermal infrared data became available for hundreds of thousands of asteroids. The infrared emission of asteroids depends on…
Asteroid Impacts pose a major threat to all life on the Earth. Deflecting the asteroid from the impact trajectory is an important way to mitigate the threat. A kinetic impactor remains to be the most feasible method to deflect the asteroid.…
Anisotropic outgassing from comets exerts a torque sufficient to rapidly change the angular momentum of the nucleus, potentially leading to rotational instability. Here, we use empirical measures of spin changes in a sample of comets to…
A statistical analysis of brightness variability of asteroids reveals how their shapes evolve from elongated to rough spheroidal forms, presumably driven by impact-related phenomena. Based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Moving Object…
Near-Earth asteroid (1862) Apollo has strong detections of both orbital semimajor axis drift and rotational acceleration. We produce a unified model that can accurately match both observed effects using a single set of thermophysical…
Asteroid pairs had a single progenitor that split due to rotational-fission of a weak, rubble-pile structured body. By constructing shape models of asteroid pairs from multiple-apparition observations and using a lightcurve inversion…
A concept for an Impact Mitigation Preparation Mission, called Don Quijote, is to send two spacecraft to a Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA): an Orbiter and an Impactor. The Impactor collides with the asteroid while the Orbiter measures the…
We have performed detailed dynamical modeling of the structure of a faint dust band observed in coadded IRAS data at an ecliptic latitude of 17$^{\circ}$ that convincingly demonstrates that it is the result of a relatively recent…
This study explores the potential to enhance the reflectance of solar insolation by the human settlement and grassland components of the Earth's terrestrial surface as a climate change mitigation measure. Preliminary estimates derived using…
We select 50 main-belt asteroids with a diameter between 20 and 400 km for which we have (i) shape models derived by the lightcurve inversion method (LI) and (ii) resolved observations of good quality collected with the Keck II adaptive…
Variations in the reflective properties of the bulk material that comprises the surface of land-dominated planets will affect the planetary energy balance by interacting differently with incident radiation from the host star. Furthermore,…
Radiolocation methods of probing minor celestial bodies (asteroids) by the nanosecond pulses can be used for monitoring of near-Earth space with the purpose of identification of hazardous cosmic objects able to impact the Earth. Development…
Pollution of white dwarf atmospheres may be caused by asteroids that originate from the locations of secular and mean-motion resonances in planetary systems. Asteroids in these locations experience increased eccentricity, leading to tidal…
Context: Potentially hazardous asteroids (PHA) in Earth-crossing orbits pose a constant threat to life on Earth. Several mitigation methods have been proposed, and the most feasible technique appears to be the disintegration of the impactor…
Time-resolved photometry of asteroids can be used for shape and spin reconstruction. If the number of measurements per asteroid is not sufficient to create a model, the whole data set can be used to reconstruct the distribution of shape…
Most major planetary bodies in the solar system rotate in the same direction as their orbital motion: their spin is prograde. Theoretical studies to explain the direction as well as the magnitude of the spin vector have had mixed success.…